Saturday, December 17, 2011

Whooperere Salutorum

So here we are on the penultimate Saturday before Christmas, a scant handful of days before the solstice, and just now as I was walking the dogs amid the snowflurries and brisk breeze, I saw 3 Vs of geese probably totaling 500 individuals heading south at a hot pace. A day late and a feather short, in my opinion, but this mild autumn and early winter encouraged all sorts of lassitude. And now, my friends, those of us not heading south at a hot pace are, I think, about to get our butts whooped in a seasonal kind of way. Because what else could induce the migrating classes to rise up from their downy waterbeds and git while the gittin’s good? Winter, that’s who. Real winter, not this globally weird travesty of a mockery of a sham we’ve had so far.

Thanks to Kevin Shea of the Commonwealth of Virginia via the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for the beautiful picture.