It is SPRING in North Carolina, although this week the weather feels more wintery. Y’all (Remember that’s North Carolinian for You All) the weather in North Carolina is so completely fickle. One day you’ll have 70 degrees and the next it will snow a couple of inches. You just NEVER know. Surrounding my office there are Holly trees, Dogwood trees, Magnolias and they are all pollinating right now and my eyes they itch something fierce. I never had allergy attacks like I do here in North Carolina. It seems like for the past 12 years I’ve had a barometer in my head (headache every time the weather changes) and my tear ducts have been on over-active. However as much as I enjoy a good complain fest…this post is not about complaining.
For more than a week now, there has been a mother dove nesting in the Carolina jasmine that is growing along the perimeter of my office building. And I have to admit here, I’ve become involved with this dove.
I heard her for the first time last Monday cooing away. The sound was so melodious I just had to take a peek into the bushes. It was love at first sight. Now I find that I’m more than just involved with this dove, I’m actually cosmically connected. I wonder if the dove is okay, I wonder if the dove is hungry, I wonder if the dove recognizes me, I wonder if the dove likes me. I am obsessed with the dove.
Multiple times a day, I run outside and check on the dove. And multiple times a day I find the dove sitting on her nest staring straight ahead pretending that I do not exist.
Yesterday afternoon, we got a brief thunder and lightning storm with some heavy rain and high winds. The kind of spring gully wash that just pops up and then is gone just as fast. I sat at my desk pretending to work. Now usually when a storm pops up I find myself looking at the clock and mentally calculating exactly where my children should be…you know because they drive now. I hope that they are not on the roads and that they are safe. Well yesterday I gave nary a thought to my children. I was thinking about my dove.
So an hour later, after the storm passed, I went outside to check on the dove. Now imagine a woman, dressed in business attire, poking around in the bushes of an office building, slipping around in the mud and muttering to herself because she keeps pricking her fingers on the thorny bush. For a split second I consider giving the dove her privacy. Doves probably have very delicate sensibilities when it comes stupid menopausal women.
I stand on my tip-toes to see her and yes, she was still there, sitting on her nest and staring straight ahead as usual. I coo to her in a low and soothing dove-like voice. I tell her how I worried over her. I asked her if the storm had frightened her. I inquire of her health and tell her she is a pretty dove and that I am a kind person. I continue our conversation along those lines and at one point she blinked which I took to mean that we were bonding.
When I turned to go back into my office, I offered a feeble wave to the student workers who were making their way up to our building, who had slowed down enough to catch me talking tenderly to the Carolina jasmine.
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4 comments:
You better watch out! My friend got attacked by a bird everey day on her way to the lightrail. It happened four days in a row. Then on the fourth day she noticed a dude in the group congregated at the station laughing at her. She thought he was a big jerk. Then he said, "If you don't wan that bird to attack you every day, you should stop cutting through the bushes, right past it's nest." She stuck to the side walk from there on out. Birds can be fierce, they like to poop on me, so I stear clear. But good luck with your dove friend.
I love this story, I can picture you fawning over your dove and I like it, it makes me smile super big.
Spring is lovely. Do be careful not to get too attached though...
...attached to the bird. Go ahead and be attached to Spring.
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