On a recent morning I was sitting on my front porch and spotted the first lizard of the year. It was a pretty lizard, green and blue, sitting in the lower branches of the tree. I watched it make its way down the branches, onto the porch railing, then down the column to the porch floor. We regarded each other with what I thought was mutual respect. The lizard started making its way across the porch until it stopped in the middle of the top step. It started to tense and wiggle its little body, back and forth, squeeze and release, wiggle and stop. I was concerned. I’ve never seen a lizard seizure, but I could imagine that’s what it would look like. Suddenly, the lizard went still and looked me dead in the eye. It started slowly pulling itself across the step, leaving behind a perfect little lizard poo. Just for me. “Well,” I thought to myself, “it must be spring.” 

I have a love/hate relationship with spring in Southeast Texas. The flowers are beautiful, but The Pollening is horrific. Though the spring days are the harbinger of seven months of ferocious summer, they’re so balmy and lovely, it’s almost possible to forget that fact. And then there’s the wildlife. Out in force and ready to party, the critters are enthusiastic and ready to get weird. 

Bumble Bee Patrol

Every year there’s a bumblebee that patrols my back door. He flies back and forth all morning. The bee is the mall cop of my backyard. There’s a lot of buzz and bluster, but when it comes down to using what authority he has – he doesn’t. Every time I step outside, the interrogation begins. Mr. Bumble Bee hovers a foot in front of my face as if to say, “Ma’am, are you authorized to be in this area? I’d like to see some ID. What is your purpose here? You didn’t bring any friends with you, did you? Have you seen another bee around here? Watch out – he’s up to no good! We’ve had reports. Don’t walk to your car by yourself. I smell something. Do you smell that? What is that sound?!?!?!” And then it abruptly flies away, before I have any time to respond. I expect this interrogation every time I go outside, and I wait patiently for it to end. He takes his job seriously, and there’s no reason to let on that I have seen the bee he’s guarding against. I’ll never tell him it’s his own reflection in the glass door.  Everybody needs a purpose, you know?  

Real Cardinals of Beaumont 

The windows, and the reflections they contain, are a problem around here. They turn bumblebees into mall cops and lady cardinals into reality show housewives. If unchecked bird aggression is your thing, I’ve got just the entertainment for you. For the last three years, one of our fellow denizens has been a female cardinal who defends her territory from her own reflection, but unlike the bumblebee’s interrogations, the cardinal gets violent. The first time I heard her slamming her body into the bathroom window, it woke me from a sound sleep.  The THUMP resonated through the house. I leapt out of bed, terrified that one of my children had fallen down the stairs. But the stairs were clear. I looked around the house and didn’t see anything conspicuously out of place. THUMP. I followed the sound back down the hallway, and as I was passing the bathroom, I saw the bird silhouette smack against the bathroom window. I stayed still and watched. After ten minutes, she’d hit the window 7 times. After about an hour, she quit. Yes, an hour. Her ego must have been more bruised than her body, because three days later the THUMP happened again. But instead of running to check the stairs, I ran out the front door instead. If I learned anything from the mall cop bee, it was the value of surveillance. I snuck to the corner of the house, hid behind a bush, and peeked around. There she was, in all her fluffy feathered rage, hitting the window of my house, pausing in the tree, and then hitting the window of the house next door! Thump, pause, thump, over and over. It looked like the houses were playing tennis with a chirping ball of rage. I didn’t know how to help her. And she wouldn’t accept my help anyway. I can only conclude that the pressure of modern lady cardinal-hood is crushing. All these years later, she’s still raging, fighting against herself every spring. Even when she hits the window so hard while I’m washing my hair that I jump shampoo in my eyes, I think “solidarity sister.” Flip that table. Fight that fight. I’ll be watching from waaaaaay over here.  

Opossum Games

I like opossums. The second-best thing about them is that they’re too short to find their reflection in anything. The best thing about them is that they run like cartoons. 

Occasionally I forget to pick up the bowl of outside cat food, and the opossums think they’ve stumbled into Golden Corral. When I hear the little clank of the bowl hitting the steps, I sneak to the back door, gently open it, and say “boo!” I don’t say it forcefully, and it scares them just enough that when they wobble-totter away, their back feet go so fast, it looks like they aren’t touching the ground at all. Just like a cartoon. I hear the Scooby-Doo-running sound in my head every time I see them take off. Late night entertainment at its best. 

The spring madness even affects our pets. Last week, my neighbor’s dog got up at 2am to go outside and do his business. When he snuggled back down into bed, my neighbor reached down and felt a weird lump on the dog’s back that hadn’t been there earlier. Alarmed, he flipped on the light, and was amused to find, nestled down in the dog’s long hair, a baby opossum hanging on for the ride. 

The weirdness, much like the pollen, is everywhere in the spring. Hang on for the ride, friends.