Ah, the country, peaceful, pastoral fields undulating with green crops… cows gently mooing at the barn doors waiting to be milked. Birds flitting from branch to branch, twigs in beaks, happily building nests, busily planning their futures.
Sounds like a corny musical doesn’t it?
Now let’s get back to reality.
Nature is noisy, messy, loud, jarring, and rather self absorbed.
Nature is the single young guys next door that partied until just after dark c hirping, and singing to the sky.
Now resuming again at the crack of dawn.
Nature is the married with kids, and a few more on the way, families of Robin R. Breast, feathered fiends of no fixed address.
Transients that settle into the neighbourhood, build a nice home, and leave just when you think you have started to become fast friends.
Nature is Wood E. Pecker, fighting over breakfast at the suet bar with Mr. and Mrs. Chick A. Dee who are clamouring with each other before you are fully awake.
Their hungry half dressed featherless kids always ravenous, and the talk of the neighbourhood.
Cooed over by that nosy childless, older couple Mr. and Mrs. Pigeon, “but please… call us Doves darling.”
Nature is the Caw Caw Crow gang, the bad boys of the bunch, dressed all in black, they carouse in the high fir trees, and whip the neighbourhood into a frenzy.
A territorial bunch they seem to fight it out with every other bird, laying claim to what ever it is they perch on, only to leave it all behind when they fly away.
Want to know why they call it the “crack” of dawn, you might assume that it’s because the sun slowly creeps over the land spreading good cheer, and light as it goes.
Nope, not at all.
It’s because a secret internal switch in every creature living outdoors is suddenly flipped, loudly, and with great intensity.
BOOM!
“Everybody up, this is not a drill!
I repeat, this is not a DRILL! up, up UP!
To your stations, sound the alarm.”
Every single feathered, and furred beast that perches in trees, and has cowered all night in a hedge is now ready to party, as in P.A.R.T.Y!
And it’s not even 4 am.
The single guys round the corner, the ones that just can’t seem to settle down, the tweeting, chirping, cawing, cajoling raucous crowd that they are start it all off.
Not that it ever ended, because Willie Coyote was out there all night long, howling at some unseen moon, chasing cows, and Farmer Fred was in hot pursuit with his shotgun.
It goes on for at least a hour and then suddenly just when you think your eardrums will never be the same, it stops.
The sounds of nature’s silence is deafening, you strain to hear something, wondering what happened, but there isn’t a peep.
Foolishly you relax a bit, and just as sleep overtakes your poor sodden brain, and you drift off into a soft land of quiet.
It starts up again.
“This is not a DRILL! WAKE UP! Meow!” Purrrr, scratch, meow.
The furry roommate has woken up, and it’s breakfast time.
Nature, one of the nosiest neighbours we have ever had.
And one of the best.