I Have a Dream

Good morning,

It's 55 degrees at 8am on the prairie and shezam, it's dark  and depressing out there.  Cloudy, cloudy skies and it just seems in such stark contrast to all of that bright sunshine that beamed onto our little blip on Planet Earth throughout the entire week.  The wind is from the east and so it appears that the clouds will stick around and already we are seeing light sprinkles of rain.  

Those of you that know us are aware of the fact that we are gaga over nature.  We do lots of activities that revolve around birds.  We belong to the Audubon Society and have great fun doing the Great Backyard Bird Count.  Another program we are involved in is one called Project Feederwatch, which is offered through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.   Every weekend from November through April, we keep track of the largest number of each species of birds that we count in our yard and then report those figures to Cornell.  And.......

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

I looked in the back this morning to begin the first count of the day.  The only bird to note was a snow goose, standing there all by himself.  I just figured that it was our Moses, who adopted us earlier in the week.  I gotta tell you, having only one goose out there at any one time is very, very rare indeed.  Usually, we are a beehive of bird activity and poop.   It's a proverbial mine field out there.  But the goose looked hungry and lonely so out I went, to say good morning and to fling out a scoop of corn.  The snow goose promptly flew away.

"Well, now, BE that way," I muttered, and continued about with my business of filling up the bird feeders.

Off in the distance, I heard the sounds of the familiar honks and squawks and soon, landing in our yard were thirty of our nearest and dearest Canada geese friends, looking for their breakfast.  With them was Moses PLUS our new little snow goose friend.  We now have TWO snow geese.  I repeat, OH MY GOD!  Moses has found his little Zipporiah!!!  That was Moses' wife in the Bible, only I will NEVER remember that name, not in a million years and thus she shall be called Zippy.

Moses and Zippy, pooping in a tree, K-I-S-S........

My husband immediately put a damper on my unbridled enthusiasm, which centered around little baby snow geese, waddling around and cooing and being cute.  I've never in my life seen a baby snow goose.  He told me that they will not mate here and they might not even recognize that they are the same species, given the fact that Moses has already demonstrated his utter stupidity by hanging out with Canada geese.  He's such a killjoy.  Still, a girl can dream.  Love and baby-making, happening right under my nose in the backyard pond, which happens to be the region's red light district for geese around these parts.

I'm going to go throw some rose petals out on that pond.  Set a chilled bottle of champagne along its banks, toss in raw oysters and some strawberries dipped in dark chocolate.  Put up a satellite dish and offer adult programming.  I know I can make this happen.  To heck with my husband's pragmatism.  He can just K-I-S-S my grits.  I shall continue to shake my snow globe and click my ruby red heels together.  I can still see them a-waddling.  I still have a dream.