Active, dormant, and extinct

It’s Saturday afternoon, post-swim meet, one of the few unoccupied bits of time that I have this weekend, so here I sit, writing all about how little time I have, thus leaving me with even less time than I would have if I wasn’t so compulsive about writing every day, no matter what. I’m an enigma wrapped in a riddle surrounded by stupid. 

I was listening to NPR on my way to pick up my son from work, and All Things Considered was airing a story about dinosaurs. I don’t know what the story was about, because it was almost over when I turned on the radio. But it occurred to me that it’s so rare these days to hear a news story about dinosaurs. “Extinct” and “newsworthy”--these are usually mutually exclusive terms. I was pleased to listen to a news story about something other than politics, and I found it utterly delightful that the anchor referred to dinosaurs as "dinos" throughout the broadcast. 

*****

I swam later that afternoon. After several days of too-cool-for-summer weather and correspondingly cold water, it was nice to swim on a legitimately warm summer day. The water was still cooler than normal for late June, but old age must be toughening me because cold water doesn’t bother me anymore. According to the weather forecast, we’re about to enter a brief but intense heat wave, with three or four days of temperatures in the high 90s and humidity that will be visible, shimmering from the asphalt on the pool parking lot. The water will go from slightly too cool to just right. 

When I got home, there was a small murder of crows on my front lawn; maybe a dozen or so. It was a third-degree murder at most. But crows in any number larger than one creep me out, and this property isn’t big enough for them and me. They or I had to go, and it’s my house. I honked my horn and chased them away. 

*****

It’s Monday now, the first day of the promised or threatened heat wave, depending on your perception. I worked inside my air-conditioned house, and then stepped outside from the relatively cool, darker than usual house (shades drawn to keep the temperature down) into the merciless bright glare of 3:30 PM on the hottest day of the summer so far. 

Last June, I worked outside a lot, my laptop and notebooks spread out on the patio table and shaded by an umbrella. This June, the cicadas made working outside impossible. The noise didn’t trouble me (though it was pretty loud) but cicadas landing on my head and my arms and my neck and (shudder) my face absolutely did trouble me. Three weeks ago, my backyard was swarming with the little pests. Our back fence was studded with resting cicadas, hundreds of them. The deep end of the pool was a cicada Viking funeral, a flotilla of dozens of cicadas who learned too late that they can’t swim. And now all of the cicadas, dead and alive, are gone, leaving behind practically no trace. The birds (maybe even the crows) might have feasted on them, and the rain washed some of them away, and maybe the rest of them just decomposed, returning unto the dust whence they came. All I know for sure is that they’re gone, and good riddance. They’re not extinct like the dinosaurs, but at least they’re not active like the crows. They’re dormant, and I hope they have a nice rest for the next 17 years. I won’t miss them.