Reflections on the Twelfth Week of Spring – My Fellas Figured Right

    “Wake up, Janet.” Spence tugged my foot and a handful of covers.

    Emerging from the murky depths of a sound sleep, I struggled to comprehend the tugging from one of my two fellas, my husband Spence. “Huh?” Had I slept through the alarm? Wait. I hadn’t set the alarm.

    “There’s a porcupine on the deck railing.” Spence said. He left.

    Porcupine. Deck. Camera? I sat up and yawned.

    “It’s gone,” Spence called from the great room. “No, it’s not. It’s right outside your window.”

    I threw off the covers. Without wasting time to grab my glasses or camera, I knelt on the bed by the window and pulled back the curtain.

    A fuzzy hair-blob crawled down the gate post at the end of the ramp. When it reached the ground, the blob unfurled giving me a rear end view of the critter. Quills flat and hair fluffed, it looked like a groundhog on a bad hair day but with longer legs. The porcupine waddled across the front yard, crossed the road, and disappeared into the woods.

    Wide awake, I jumped off the bed, dashed to the great room, and peppered Spence with questions to get the beginning of the porcupine tale.

    He chuckled and told me.

    Earlier, while he’d worked on his tablet, he heard “a commotion” on deck.

    George, our no-longer-fat-cat, crouched low to the great room floor, crept to the sliding glass door, and peered up.

    Spence followed George’s gaze to a porcupine.

    The porcupine crept along the deck rail behind the orange black-eyed Susans then stopped to nibble wisteria.

    “I figured you’d be disappointed if I told you about the porcupine later,” he said.

    He got that right. I was glad he woke me at 5:45 a.m. that Tuesday.

    My other fella, son Charlie, didn’t need to wake me.

    Thursday afternoon, after rinsing out my swim gear, I stepped onto the porch carrying a pants hanger with a black pool shoe dangling from each clamp and the handle of my swim bag slung over the hook. Mid reach to the metal frame holding the coconut husk straw of the hanging basket, Charlie tugged my arm.

    “Don’t hang it there. You’re going want to take pictures.”

    He moved the cow bell from the hook beside the front door, took my loaded hanger, and placed it on the freed hook.

    I looked from him to the thin spider plant. “Why would I want a picture of that plant?”

    “Two birds are taking straw from the basket to build a nest.”

    “Taking straw?”

    “I was reading on the love seat and heard a noise behind me. I turned and saw two birds taking straw from the hanging basket. They seemed oblivious to me,” he said.

    My mouth must have dropped because he pointed and said, “You can see the mess they made at the bottom where they pulled.”

    Indeed.

    I fetched my camera, attached the zoom lens, and stood inside the house, four feet from the front door. Within a minute, a phoebe perched on the rim of the hanging basket and pecked at the nesting material.

    I clicked one picture.

    The phoebe turned its head toward me then flew to the tree nursery. Though I checked frequently during the afternoon, the birds didn’t return.

    I didn’t have another winged critter to focus on until Saturday morning when I prepared the bag for George’s subcutaneous fluid treatment.

    Charlie tugged my arm and, without a word, led me to the sliding screen door.

    A silver-spotted skipper butterfly sucked nectar from an orange black-eyed Susan. No need to ask questions.

I tiptoed to fetch my camera then slowly slid the screen door open. Before I stepped outside, the butterfly flitted away.

    I left the camera on and lens cap off. After I gave George his water treatment, I frequently glanced to the deck. Whenever a silver-spotted skipper returned, I grabbed the camera, stepped out the front door, and crept around the porch to the deck. Again and again the skippers flitted away. Finally, one skipper succumbed to purple pansy nectar.

    It sipped.

    I clicked.

    Usually I prefer to surprise my fellas with quirky behaviors like lying on my stomach in the middle of West Creek Road to get the right angle for a photo. But this week, experiencing a porcupine waddle across the front yard, a phoebe collecting straw from the hanging basket, and a silver-spotted skipper sucking nectar, I was glad my fellas figured right.