Spring fever has hit our house something fierce. It’s like a sexy rainbow squatted over my house and peed spring pheromones.
It seems like in every crevice and eave of our house, birds have set up nests. Right on my front patio, inches from my front door, a hummingbird built her itty, bitty nest in a wind chime and then became all momma bear about it. For the first few days, every time we so much as opened the front door she’d swoop down to the screen door, right at face level, daring us to walk outside. Eventually she realized we weren’t going to bother her, and we’ve been neighborly since.
I’m not sure what the attraction has been to our house, but in some ways it’s kind of cool. We watched as Momma Bear hummingbird hatched her eggs, in what seemed like just a matter of days, and then kicked her babies out of the nest. We even watched from our front door as she gave one flying lessons on the patio until he got the hang of it and flew off.
As if that isn’t enough of an introduction to the birds and the bees, I also unintentionally introduced fish.
As part of a journalistic endeavor, I was set to watch a midnight grunion run and dragged my family along for the fun. Sitting on the beach on a school night—way past their bedtime—looking for the fish called a grunion was fun for a while so my kids didn’t ask exactly what a grunion run was until they noticed nothing was happening. “So what is supposed to happen?” they finally asked.
I explained that it’s when the grunion swim onto the sand in hundreds to spawn after the first full moon.
“So we’re here to watch a bunch of fish have sex?” one of them asked sounding disgusted.
The thought of a fish spawning ritual may have made them wince but I have noticed that the teen rituals of pre-dating have them intrigued.
Between conversations about Minecraft and iPhones I’ll occasionally hear a girl’s name that is too conventional to be a video game character. I’ll hear the name float by in almost a whisper, and my ears will perk up, and I’ll see my boys’ eyes dart my way and then away again.
Occasionally, they will go to movies with “friends” and the only friend that materializes is a pretty little girl for what is totally not a date.
It is funny how different my boys are about their interest in girls: totally cool, aloof, and non-spazzy, as opposed to how I was at their age—totally spazzmatic.
Even though Ron and I will have officially been married for like 153 years this November, I can still recall freshman year of high school being infatuated with a star-athlete several years older than me, who didn’t know I existed. My friend and I would watch him practice, and one day he walked by me and said hi as he passed. I completely lost it. “He. Said. Hi. To. Me.” I said to my friend hitting her arm after each word for emphasis.
My boys don’t seem to get those kinds of reactions.
However, our dog, Finn, does.
Last week he began digging for freedom under our fence. Then, one morning Sebastian looked out our sliding door to the patio and said, “Hey Molly is in our backyard.”
Molly is our neighbor’s dog. Apparently she finished Finn’s hole from her end and squeezed under the fence into our patio. Finn heard her name, and his ears perked up.
He quickly squeezed himself out from his favorite hiding place under the couch and ran to the sliding door. He stared at her. When she barked he went nuts.
Finn jumped up and started to swat at my son Jake’s shoulders, and he tried to use his “words” the way he does when he really wants us to do something. I swear I could hear in his dog-English “she.said.hi.to.me!”
Then he ran back to the window and stared at her some more. When he saw me walk in the room he ran to me, jumped up, and began swatting at my shoulders and talking wildly. “Did you hear me? She. Said. Hi!” he said again in his weird dog-speak.
It didn’t take long before Molly became bashful from all the attention and squeezed back under the fence, vanishing into her own yard, and I had the boys go outside and fill in the hole.
Finn sat in front of the glass most of that morning sighing heavily from time to time and watching and waiting for the female to reappear in his backyard.
I’m hoping that like with any other virus, spring fever will soon pass and make way for summer madness—because it’s definitely one fever I don’t want to catch.
Sun Contributor Shelly Cone prefers the summer heat. Reach her through her editor at clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 14-21, 2015.