L headed back to the mountains today, so it was up to me to console the mournful Molly. We tried a sneaky trick this time – we had Molly out in the back yard playing while we loaded L’s truck. It meant Molly didn’t catch on to the impending departure of her mistress quite as soon. In order to cheer both Molly and myself up, we went for a nice long walk this afternoon after L left. If Molly is tired enough, she doesn’t get a chance to mope because she is busy sawing logs as she snores away, usually at my feet in my office.
While we were walking, it was once again borne home to me just how much the climate change has got the flora and fauna confused this year. The robins are still here in mass. There will  not be a first robin of spring here since they never left. This is the first time in my memory that the robins have not left for the winter to return in the spring. It is really strange to see hundreds of robins in the trees and on the grasses in January and February in this area. I even saw a few pairs mating today. Makes me wonder what is going to happen to the population if they all get fooled into early mating and subsequent egg laying while it is still freezing at night and we may get weeks of extended cold.
Yet another sign that the climate is driving the birds loony is that Canadian geese are circling in the late afternoons. The characteristic Vs of geese honking and circling the corn fields and river ponds is not usually heard at this time of the year. They have apparently not completed their southward migration and are instead hanging around in the fields edging town and on the river bottom. Normally they come flying south in November and December and aren’t seen again until spring. Not this year.
I could continue with a long and boring compendium of odd fauna behaviors related to the climate upset, but you get the picture. Things are a bit strange out here in the hinterlands. The weather is changing, air streams and the resultant rain patterns are changing, and the plants and animals are duly confused.
I’ll close with a couple of pictures of Molly.
First we have Molly laying forlornly by the fireplace in the library:
But then I asked her if that was a squirrel making noise outside:
That got her attention. Note all of her chew toys on the floor. (You didn’t really think I’d leave a hamburger sitting on the floor did you? And you surely didn’t think that Molly would not snarf it if I did leave it did you?)