BUGS

In this slow part of winter, as we're waiting for the big hinge to turn, I thought I'd take advantage of the brief lull to ramble on a bit about the fact that those who live in the city have few such educational experiences, but if you live in or next to the woods you soon get to know all the resident bugs on a personal basis (any day now) because they all come to visit you at one time or another, bringing family and friends to introduce to every aspect of your house and garden (the bug family is a big one), hang around your lights and meals and get personal, quickly wearing out what little welcome they might have, except in a few instances, like ladybugs, lightning bugs, crickets and butterflies.

So in the country, bugs become pretty thoroughly intimate with their human counterparts. The city dweller, by contrast, when buzzed by a bug on a bus for example tends to cringe away, hands waving, because the creature is a complete stranger and intruder, whereas the country dweller in the city recognizes it, because it or its relative has been to his house before, and he relates accordingly.

For example, there's the hinged bug our cat caught once, that was fascinatingly iridescent down its beetly back, it seemed to be in three segments, maybe - including antennae - ten centimeters long, and that as far as I could tell rubbed the segment edges together to make a kind of intimidating hissing sound, which sure didn't intimidate the cat, but it probably works on other bugs, and it certainly worked on me, I wouldn't touch the thing, but if I meet its like on the subway at least we won't be unacquainted, whereas a city dweller being a complete stranger to such a creature might faint dead away (though bugs of this type tend to shun the city as unrewarding to their kind, which requires trees, genuine soil and relatives in ample numbers).

Bugs themselves keep no record of having met you; the social aspects all have to be taken care of on your side, so that a chance meeting isn't a total surprise (I never forget a face), as nearly all such occasions (excepting the cockroach et al.) are for the poor city dweller, who after all coined the verb 'to bug'.

Now back to prepping for the big hinge.

BIRD GOSSIP

Oh how wondrous are three-day weekends and no matter the brevity of your list, you never get it all done, because there's always a bigger list operative: the cosmic list, that stands waiting immutably for you when in the eagerness of all innocence you walk out the door to begin work on your own personolocal and much less relevant list, such as cutting firewood or caulking a wall, or some such rationally immediate objective. So although I did get a few of my own items done, there were just enough cosmic perturbations going to skew my aim a bit and have the Monday sun set as I was halfway done planting the beans I'd planned to plant since Friday.

But epiphanies abounded: Sunday morning when I awoke I heard a tiny, delicate ruckus going on in the dawn outside my window; looking out I could see nothing but some chestnut tree limbs and a few late leaves in sunshine, all very nice, until on closer examination with hastily de-bleared eyes I saw that the tree was festooned with tiny bark-and-sunlight colored long-tailed tits, like delicate christmas tree ornaments bouncing around, who in their formal wear went hopping from branch to branch pecking at tiny bugs and such, the tree no doubt liking it very much, I could almost hear it say "Yes...YES! Right--there--aaahhh!" over and over again as the suitably dressed and chittering mob passed through on a long and leisurely mountainside breakfast over an extended bit of bird gossip.