Somewhere in the county there is a little, orange-breasted robin suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. It was my fault. I didn’t mean to tackle him. I blame my erratic behaviour on a perennial illness: Spring Fever.
Don’t worry; he got away before my down-filled winter coat could cushion the blow of my full body weight. I can see it now in slow motion, like a movie. I was walking through a park. The wind was whipping with gusts so strong the pom-pom tassels of my polar bear toque were hitting my face like I was a drum to be played.
I was cursing that gap in the zipper of my coat where the wind always finds a way to enter. My faux fur gloves were stuffed in my pockets and my shoulders were wound up tight, as high as my ears, so that I looked like a bank robber in the old cartoons. All you could see were my squinted eyes. My heavy-duty winter boots, chosen for warmth over fashion, were making that crunch-crunch-crunch sound in the hard snow. The frozen sun was teasing me with mock warmth.
There he stood, my robin, all plump and splendiferous, his orange feathers gently lifting in the wind, showing his white undercoat. Robin’s beady black eyes were fixated on a sweet little female robin a few feet away, her skinny legs and slender wings casting a feminine silhouette. She would hop two times to the right. Then he would hop two times to the right. They were having a moment together. I could almost hear his pick-up line, “Hey baby, how about you and I get together, gather some mud, twigs, and make some blue eggs in the eavestrough?”
She was coy. She kept hopping, bouncing like she had spring-loaded legs. Hop, hop. Her eyes would shift away and then return to meet his gaze. He would follow. Hop, hop. He was clearly a jock, like the ones in my high school. You know, anything you can do I can do better, with way better hair. He kept puffing his chest.
I stopped. I rubbed my crusted eyes. Was I really seeing my first robin of spring 2011? Everyone knows the first robin sighting of the season means it’s official: spring is here, or at least it’s packing for near arrival. Was this a mirage? Could this be real, I wondered? Spring. Hope. Flowers. Birdies. Quick, I need a witness. Holy adrenaline.
Suddenly, the two robins looked up. They had spotted me, the lunatic with a polar bear on her head. Time stopped. Their bodies turned to statue. The world got quiet. That’s when I yelled like a deranged groupie. “Robin,” I screamed, leaping towards the male robin as if it was a football in the last quarter of the Super Bowl, and I was a Pittsburgh Steeler. The female bird flew away before I could stop myself in mid-air. She headed for a tree before taking flight far, far away from the crazed two-headed polar bear and the potential bird of her dreams.
Robin flew to a safe height and watched me from overhead, as I landed across the frozen-tundra and slid into the snow. He had a look of pity on his pointed face.
Spring Fever. It gets me every year. There is only one cure. Hurry spring. Seriously.