Signs Of Sprung

Nope, not a typo. No misspelling. I would ordinarily welcome this changing season as spring, but.....  Lots of "buts".

I could write tomes on the current political crap in this country, huge numbers of hard working government employees kicked out their doors,  services to be cut back or mangled by inadequate staffing or institutional memory, loss of our country's respect in the world (well earned), etc. Let's just call the federal government "sprung" and move on, eh?

The weather has been pretty OK for the season, though they've changed our local forecast for tonight from 1 - 2 inches of snow to 8 - 10 tonight, and who knows how much more tomorrow? I had debated setting the garbage bin out curbside tonight knowing a plow would make a bank around it, but went ahead while the forrcast was still topped off at 2 inches. It needs dumping, and I wanted to be back inside for the day before the rain leading the incoming system got serious.

For all not familiar with ice fishing, just be aware that all the ice houses are off the local lakes now, with no tales of  sinking into the lakes anywhere locally. One car down in the metro area made the news repeatedly when it went through the ice early in the season, and finally got pulled out just days ago before too many fines could be leveled. Ice houses left too long would get fines too, but cars get extra ones for the many chemicals added to whatever lake they sink into: gas, oil, brake fluid, radiator fluid, washer fluid... and that's just the body of the car. Who knows what was inside? (At least it didn't include humans.)

Aside from the large piles from plows, the snow left a week ago.  Puddles sunk into thawed-enough ground a couple days ago, bunnies decorated the brown grass with black pebbles as they searched for early season edibles while waiting for anything green to pop. Squirrels run through treetops like children through new playgrounds.  A pair of deer strolled between homes across the street this morning. 

All sounds right on schedule, right? 

I pulled down the two suet feeders this weekend , threw the suet in the garbage, and sterilized the wire racks. I've never thought to do that last part before. But this isn't a normal year. Normal has been sprung, like the formerly perfect winding coil on a fine old watch.

It's the birds.

 Now I know you'll by now have heard about the bird flu in chickens... and turkeys, and ducks, and cows, and mice, and cats, and.....  

Let's take cats. A good friend has 4, kept inside at all times. The family has believed they are fully protected against the disease that is highly fatal in domestic cats. One way to transfer it is through the feces of sick animals. So if you happen to walk through rodent or bird droppings,  you can possibly track it in. Mice clean up grains left by chickens and the feed of other flu victims, and have lots of ways you've never thought of to enter your house. The virus is also now thought to be windborne. So we had a  long chat about protecting their beloved pets. Chats always work, right?

I tried.

Crows, vultures, lots of furry animals  are cleaners out in the environment. We often know them better as carrion eaters. Virus in, virus out, doing whatever damage it will on its way depending on how the animal fends it off. We know cows are otherwise unaffected but spread it in their raw milk. Many other critters just aren't studied for it yet.

The thing that most says spring to me are the annual northward migrations. For about 2 weeks now the trumpeter swans have been heading through, though more are sticking around here for the summer each year. So big, so white against all the vegetation, so graceful, and honking like a kid's toy trumpet. This year they even arrived ahead of Canada geese, usually the first arrivals. But the first geese were honking out on the local lake two mornings ago. It's still fully iced over, and the geese have gone on. What has arrived north so far looks fat and healthy.

Hard on all their "heels" (or wings) are reports of large numbers of migrating birds' flu deaths coming in from areas they have flown though. Heading up the Atlantic coast, dead gulls scattered all over. Sandhill cranes dead in clumps here of 30, there 40, somewhere else estimated around 100. The sandhills which arrive in eastern MN and western WI come from southeastern wintering grounds, unlike the western ones which famously come up to stop over on the Platte River in Nebraska in huge numbers after wintering in places like Arizona. I'm not following that area. Different sandhills.

We don't normally see the cranes here until the first days of April. I won't know how the ones specific to this area have fared for a while yet. But as soon as I learned the news on the ones heading our general direction, that's when I went out to take down the feeders. No sense in courting a conglomeration of birds, even the songbirds. Nor squirrels, much as I cussed them out when they were digging out my new bulbs last fall. If they can get it, being rodents, they can spread it.

I'm heartbroken for all the cranes in advance of knowing how their numbers will be affected this year. But rather than looking forward to this coming season, for me it's been sprung, in the worst way.