Chinook
by George  M Hosier II  - May 15

The Torment of Spring

Let me tell you something right now. I’ve had about all of Spring I can stomach! I swear, if one more person skips up to me quoting sonnets about the gorgeous weather and sunshine, I’m gonna knock them flatter than water on a plate! This is my least favorite season. I’m feeling grumpy enough about having to endure it, without a bunch of superficial do-gooders trying to cheer me out of my dark blue funk!

When I patiently scream at them that Spring is a giant zit on the face of the year, they look at me as if I were a Matanuska Valley zucchini and they were allergic to squash. I wind up having to engage them in a fruitless and exhausting debate in defense of my perfectly legitimate opinion. Therefore, in hopes of curtailing any more perky greetings from you romantic idealists out there, let me mention just a couple of the woes and trials that have plagued me this year, since the mercury in my stupid thermometer forgot how to stay down below zero where it belongs.

To start with, there’s the weird animal behavior. Critters go berserk every spring: Madly cavorting. Making silly goo-goo eyes at each other. Wrestling. You’d think the squirrels and tweety birds had never seen another of their kind before. Maybe they’re stoned from eating a bad batch of last year’s cranberries or something. Yesterday, I just about got smacked upside the head by a pair of squirrels that flung themselves out of a tree and performed some heart-stopping aerobatics three inches in front of my face before dashing into the brush beside my driveway. I could have sworn that the one in pursuit had a long-stemmed rose clenched in his teeth and was carrying a box of chocolate-covered nuts.

The delirium seems to be contagious. Even my barn animals have caught it. Prince, the gelding has taken to leaping over the fence into the goat pen. I think he started the practice when his paddock mate, Stasia the three-year-old mare began chomping chunks out of his hide.

He’d be standing in a sun-drenched corner of the barnyard with his head down and a blissful, drowsy look on his face. Nearby, Stasia would be eying him, ears perked, nostrils flared, striking at the ground with a front hoof. Suddenly, a pair of squirrels or birds would come cavorting by. Stasia would gaze after them, sighing, her attention riveted by the stream of little throbbing red hearts trailing in their wake. Suddenly, she’d swing her head around, blow loudly, toss her mane and sink her teeth deep into Prince’s withers! The poor gelding would come unglued. Literally! He’d crow-hop 12 feet into the air, leaving a big puddle of collagen where he had been standing.

Spitting out a mouthful of his hair, Stasia would nicker amusedly at him. She thought it hilariously entertaining to watch him frantically slosh around in the collagen puddle trying to reabsorb it before his hooves crumbled into fine powder. As luck would have it, one afternoon upon touching down after his crow hop, Prince discovered that he had inadvertently cleared the fence that separated his paddock from the goat pen. To his delight, he also soon discovered that Stasia couldn’t reach him there.

That’s all it took for Prince to become a regular fence hopper. Our billy goat, Bilbo, finds this development quite disconcerting. Until this monstrous hornless goat with the long silken tail descended from the heavens, Bilbo had considered himself God’s gift to the flock. He fancied himself protector of all things edible, keeper of the sacred flame of Libido and terror of all who dared challenge his reign. Then, without warning, Prince landed smack in the middle of his domain. The world as Bilbo knew it would never be the same again.

With his harem looking on, bleating in anticipation of their lord’s thundering vengeance, Bilbo had no choice but to confront the intruder. Ego demanded it. Summoning all of his bravado, Bilbo reared high on his hind legs and brought his front hooves crashing to the ground as he wagged his head in challenge. Failing to recognize the ultimatum he had just been served, Prince nuzzled a tuft of hay on the ground and nonchalantly lipped it into his mouth.

Oh, sacrilege of sacrileges! The bloated hairy intruder was brazenly consuming the specific strand of hay that Bilbo had set aside for a mid-morning snack. In a blind rage he charged. The horns that had hurled many an arrogant kid against the far fence crashed against the docile munching visage of the enemy. The enemy snorted and jumped back a step, neck arched, eyes wide. This was good! Bilbo’s upper lip curled nearly inside out with scorn. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. He reared again, shaking his head impressively as he blubbered out his battle cry and gathered himself for the coup-de-grace.

Huh? What was this? Inexplicably, the enemy had turned around and presented him with that hideous silken tail. What was he expected to do with that? Sniff it like a dog? Antagonists were supposed to resolve battles by bashing heads together. Evidently the great behemoth had no stomach for epic feats of brain-squishing, skull-pulverizing combat.

Oh, well. Anticlimactic though it may be, let no goat say he had ever retreated from a coup-de-grace. Bilbo dug his stubby legs in, and propelled himself forward with all his might until a fleshy “smack” confirmed that his noble horns had connected with the fuzzy cheeks that framed the intruder’s silken tail. The goat king swaggered back chuckling, then peered in bewilderment at the twin hoof-tipped pistons driving powerfully toward his face much faster than his mind could process.

OH MY! That really hur...er…was invigorating! He had never flown before! How fascinating to crash into the fence just a few feet above the spot where he was wont to pummel unruly kids. Bilbo slid down the fence and lay quivering at the bottom for a moment, savoring his victory. Then he staggered drunkenly to his feet and made another charge toward the silken tail. Wait a minute, now there were three—now there were two—now there were five tails, blurry and shimmering. Had Arnold Shwarzegoater called in reinforcements? He picked a tail and rammed it.

Fireworks! Agony! As Bilbo rocketed toward the fence again, he emitted a vibrato giggle at the though of how badly the trespasser’s hoofs must be hurting by now. He lay among the goat berries for a while longer this time, taking the leisure to gloat in his triumph. At length, upon his fifth attempt to rise, he found his feet and lurched toward the silken tail again. Weakly, he bobbed his head in tentative challenge as he formulated his strategy. He determined that two buttings had probably sufficiently humiliated and demoralized his adversary. Lord Bilbo would vouchsafe mercy to the vanquished. In fact, as a gesture of his gracious generosity, he would permit him to continue munching on the royal mid-morning snack—on one condition:

His Majesty stretched forth his neck, seized the silken tail between his teeth, and chomped, shearing off a third of its width in a ragged and unsightly line. Prince submitted to the humbling ordeal, showing no more resistance as Bilbo reduced his glorious tail to something that resembled a prickly pear cactus. The challenger had been subdued. Peace reigned in the goat pen once again!

Peace, however, escapes me. I am sick and tired of chasing Prince out of the goat pen and mortified that my once beautiful gelding now has more bare hide visible than hair. Between Stasia and Bilbo, even his mane looks like something Picasso might have painted during a hangover.

The animal antics are but a miniscule factor contributing to my detestation of all things Spring. I haven’t even discussed the vast ocean of yard debris that Spring has uncovered. While the merciful snow blanketed the landscape, all appeared pristine and serene. Now my yard resembles a Manhattan garbage barge. It’s going to take me until the snow flies again to clean up the winter’s accumulation of soda cans, windblown grocery bags, lumber scraps, and 1.7 million cubic tons of dog turds.

My wife (a pox on her) always tries to look on the bright side. As I was surveying my trash-choked property from the vantage point of my front porch, she must have heard my strangled screams of frustration, because she came outside and slipped her hand through my left akimbo trembling elbow.

“Why, look, George! There’s the stamp collection you’ve been looking for since November! Isn’t that great! I think most of it is salvageable. Oh, and there, sticking out of the edge of that mud bog—isn’t that the new pair of sealskin mittens you accused me of giving to Value Village? I bet your son borrowed them and didn’t notice that they fell off of the snow machine. Isn’t it a gorgeous day?”

Yeah. It’s a gorgeous day all right! A gorgeous day to put on my breakup boots and slosh around the field trying to repair the damage that the moose have done to my electric fence over the winter. A gorgeous day to rake the gravel piles that the snow plows have dumped in my grass. A gorgeous day to clean the soggy sawdust and wood chips out of my firewood lot in preparation for another brief and desperate woodcutting season. Bah, humbug! I wish we’d get a blizzard!

 

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