Animal talk

In my fervor to discover, this morning, whether winter will be lasting another six weeks or not, I ran across an interesting piece of information I had never been hip to until today. Did you know that Punxsutawney Phil is not the only weather-predicting groundhog? It's true! He has colleagues all over the hemisphere – all over the world, for all I know! These include Wiarton Willie in Ontario (an albino, and I fear, a possible mass murderer!) and Shubenacadie Sam in Nova Scotia, Canada, as well as Staten Island Chuck, and my favorite, General Beauregard Lee (scroll down), who, according to the world wide web, lives in a groundhog-sized antebellum mansion in Georgia. CNN reports that Lee predicted an early spring this year after "game ranch officials roused him with an antique farm bell and the scent of Southern yams."

I want a groundhog-sized antebellum mansion.

Around here it's raining, which I think is supposed to mean spring is on its way. I love, love, love the rain here. Mr. A has been riding to and from work with me the last few days, and last night we took the extra-long route home, just because it was so lovely and warm and fresh-smelling. I made him stop at all my usual spots – a certain sewer grate through which you can hear the thrilling rush of a mysterious underground creek; a curve on the bike path that has a delicious-smelling flowering something-or-other growing near it (I haven't yet been able to identify the source of the smell); a low spot next to the neighbor's hay field that when full of water has so many frogs singing in it you can hardly hear anything else; the place where the edge of our road collapsed into the creek, where you can now stand just a couple of feet from the edge of the water and listen to it flowing by, and smell that wonderful fresh water smell; and finally, our neighbors' pasture, which has five new calves living in it as of about three weeks ago, presumably being grown for beef.

These same folks had three cows last year and I only got to talk to them twice (the cows, not the people) before they suddenly disappeared. All summer, the pasture was empty. Then these five new girls showed up, and I'm determined to make friends with them before they, too, go the way of hamburger. So far I've only met with them at night, because they're never in the field when I go by in the morning. I learned the first time I stopped to see them in the evening that they are very young, and shy, and afraid of the lights on my bike. So we're taking it slow. I turn down the light and park the bike across the street now before I go over to say hello. Progress is slow, but steady. They used to leap to their feet and bolt across the field every time I came by. Now, they just take a couple of steps away.

Soon they will be eating out of my hands.