I love the country – the fresh air, the peace, the ineffable sense that the slow turn of seasons will refresh my soul….
Except spring. One would think that spring in the country would be the perfect Zen experience (Pinterest does!). Hah! Spring is a Mother Nature with PMS. She’s on a rampage.
Turn around and the weeds are fourteen feet high. While sneezing like some horrific plague has infected me, I try to chop back some volunteer vines snaking up my expensive, carefully nurtured, fruit trees. Nature snarls and spikes gouge my skin. Trying not to whimper, I decide on a relaxing ramble through the woods. Lovely, until I sink to my shins in mud. Random twigs adorn my hair.
Meanwhile, the birds are on steroids, cackling (strike that) singing and chirping their merry little song from pre-5 a.m. daybreak on. My dogs got too close to a nest yesterday and mommy and daddy bird dive-bombed my head. Who would have thought that even birds would want to protect those bulgy-eyed, squawking fledglings? Not like they seem grateful! Those beaky mouths are always wide open and squalling. Like most babies.
Mother Nature likes her little jokes.
The mosquitoes have all completed advanced kamikaze warfare training and are attacking in squadrons. The dragonflies have been slow to regroup this year and the mosquitoes outnumber them by ten billion to seven. The swallows by day and bats by night are sending in their single guerilla troops, but they’re hopelessly outnumbered.
The world is ending and the bugs that want to eat me are winning.
When night falls, I huddle in my house, shoulders hunched to my ears, listening for the monstrous whine that precedes the aerial attack of the blood-suckers. Sleep…precious sleep….then eeeeeeeeee. Silence! Where is it? OMG. Spring from the bed, arms flailing. Useless. It’s gone.
Eeeeeeeeee….
I cower under the sheets, peeping out at the dogs. My loyal companions, sleeping peacefully with only two unfurred noses exposed. Take them! I plead. Please, take them! Betrayal and cowardice have claimed me.
Finally, exhaustion wins over primal terror and I drop into a fitful doze. And then…chirp, chirp, chirpy….
The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the day begins anew.…
I hate the country.