Buy my wife a new car? (Feb. 11)

Valentine’s Day – thanks a lot guys

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

As I write today, it’s as if I am in the eye of a hurricane. It’s not snowing. What is going on?

            I can say, without fear of contradiction as they say, that this is the first day in the past ten that it has not snowed. Some days it only snowed for fifteen minutes, but others it was 24 x 60 = 1440 minutes. And now I look at the forecast: “Tomorrow snow will begin in mid-afternoon and will continue until the evening – two months from now.”

            It is nearly St. Valentine’s Day. This is the time of year that we go out and buy cards for anything up to five dollars (including a CD of Beyonce lying down on a floor) to show our loved ones that we haven’t forgotten them, be they in Korea, Fort MacMurray or Tilley. Somewhere and sometime over the years a romantic holiday has become an occasion to send roses and cards and profess our love and like and if we don’t do that we might be accused of non-love. We all get it, don’t we? Remember Christmas and all those soft-focus jewelry commercials?

            According to Wikipedia, that Feast of St. Valentine was first associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the late Middle Ages, and “in 18th-century England, it evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards known as valentines…Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have given way to mass-produced greeting cards.”

            Thanks a lot Hallmark. Nice going, guys and gals.

            My Aunt Biddy, always a sentimentalist with everyone but me, thought I should buy my bride a new car to make up for all the rolling pins she’s gone through over the years, somehow making it sound as if I had been a less than ideal husband, but I thought a $3.29 card more than atoned for any alleged misdeeds of mine over the years. Flug, who had been reading my column over my shoulder, then paraphrased a line from a P.G Wodehouse book. “I always thought she was half-baked, but now I know they didn’t even put her in the oven.”

            “Does that mean you agree with me, old friend, that Valentine’s Day is yet another money-grab?” He said he hated to say it, but he did, in fact, agree. “My third - or was it fourth? – wife Gelnna always wanted me to take her out to supper (or ‘dinner’ as she called it) on Valentine’s Day, so one day I drove her all the way to Tilley Takeout but it was closed until May.”

            “That marriage didn’t last long, did it Flug?”

                                                *****************************

            Speaking of bird watching, I just saw what I am quite sure was a California Condor as he or she stood hopefully on my bird feeder. Only minutes earlier I had seen a mountain plover pecking around the snow-covered lawn.

            “Bob, I want to be diplomatic here,” said Flug, and I knew he had no intention of being diplomatic, or even making an attempt thereof. “Bob, you are an idiot,” he said diplomatically. “A mountain plover, like the bubonic plague, is only found in the southwest U.S.A. and Madagascar, and a California Condor is only found in one state. Before you ask, it’s California.”

            The point I am making with this narrative is that bird books are just about as useless as a birth control device for a gelding. One I often refer to is ‘Birds of North America’ which, like a computer ‘help’ file, is useless unless you already know the answer. But, since you already know the answer, it is similar to what my Aunt Germain used to say to me: “Well then, what’s the good of ya?”

            What brought me to this edge of despair was that when I looked out at my bird feeder an hour ago there were several different kinds of birds besides the usual chickadees and slate coloured juncos. It looked as if someone had opened a box of sparrows and dumped them there. I dashed for my bird book.

            It reminded me of my success at lotteries. Although I have been buying tickets since 1955, I have never won a thin dime, or even a fat one. So it is with identifying birds via ‘Birds of North America’. The ones I do recognize were drummed into my head by the likes of the great naturalist the late Fred Tribe and by the very knowledgeable Murray Watters.

            So I looked and looked and looked and could not find a photo of ANY of the sparrow-like birds on my porch. I went over it again, then again, then once more. “I think that one is a neagle,” said Flug, referring to a bird about the size of a chickadee.

            “I don’t know what a neagle is,” I said, “but if you mean an eagle, you’re an idiot, so at least I’m not alone.”

                                                   -end-