On Birds and Italian Ice

Today was the first day of spring and I made it a point to visit my garden before I headed to Oakland to meet my roommate for our annual celebration of Free Rita’s Day.  The air still made me shiver while a paced the mulch and grass and the plants still look cold and tired, but the freshness of the wet dirt seems hopeful.  But for the first time since I started this blog absolutely no snow could be found in or near my garden.  Even earlier in this winter, when unusually warm days left me without the need of my winter jacket, clusters of snow clung to the cool shaded corners of the garden.

Even so,  I could tell something was off today from the moment I descended the stairs to the nestled garden.  Not until I heard the solitary crow’s caw did I realize the birds were missing.  Their sweet, if not cacophonous, chirps called to me for the past two days while I sat in front of a computer at work.  They even called to me from my apartment window in the fading night, their conversations so loud it felt as though they shared the room with me.  Just this morning, on my walk to work, robin redbreasts and daring squirrels flecked the sloped green of the chapel’s hill.

Yet by the time I reached the garden early this evening it seemed they all had vanished.  Even the three crows—only one of which bothered to speak that individual caw—hopped from tree to tree as they, too, deserted me. 

It would surprise me if my sudden appearance in the garden had caused the dismissal of the birds—and squirrels for that matter.  I doubted the tired branches hosted the birdy party of the year until my clomping steps scared them all away.  The animals on this campus are anything but scared.  In fact, I sometimes think they might be a little too daring in their proximity to humans.  Just this past December, a squirrel chewed through a screen in the middle of the night and broke in to a friend’s apartment to dine on an unopened bag of rice cakes.  Though it left long before she woke the next morning, it came back later that day to wait longingly at the now closed window.

 And the birds?  Those brazen chickadees?  Why they’d sooner yell at you than move out of your path.  Not that they don’t have a right to be there.  Chickadees are actual a favorite of mine.  I hear they can become comfortable enough around a particular human to eat out of his or her hand, though my mother and I were never quite able to test this theory out in her Disney movie of a backyard.

But this tangent just adds to my argument: my being in the garden should not have been cause for the birds to run—well I guess technically fly—away. 

The garden felt eerie on this first day of spring.  It should have been cheerful and exciting without the insulation of the quiet snow.

I left the garden, took the long way around campus to catch a bus on 5^th and wait in line for my free Rita’s.  And do you know what happened when I reached the top step out of my garden?  The birds came back.  Their voices sounded soft and distant, especially compared to the chorus in the air the past two days.  But nonetheless their voices returned and travel as far as they could.

  So maybe the birds aren’t angry with me invading their garden.  Maybe they’re mad at the garden.  Or maybe they know the date of the calendar means nothing; that there is the possibility of snow this coming weekend and we are doomed to this winter/spring limbo for a while longer. 

Silly humans they think, retreating again from the weather, eating your Italian ice in the cold.  Pretending it’s spring doesn’t make it spring.

And they might be right.  But that doesn’t mean I enjoyed my mango ice any less.