Impressions of Life

While walking from the main building to my office yesterday evening, I watched grey storm clouds jostling for position over my head. A red-tail hawk soared into view, surfing the edge of the storm front. Tail and wings fully spread, he could have been a kite without a string. Other birds had taken cover from the oncoming storm, but the hawk was defiantly hurling itself through the sky. The storm might have been bigger than the bird, but there was no way he was going to back down from it.

Driving home through a light drizzle, I took my usual short-cut past the Naval Air Station. The road runs by a fence topped with barbed wire, and the fence stands guard over a little-used section of the base. The field lights were on inside of the fence, which is an unusual occurence that has become usual in the past few weeks. It was drizzling, but the night was still balmy, and I had my car window cracked. I heard the roar of a jet overhead, and as that sound faded another sound became apparent. Spring peepers, the tiny first frogs of spring, were singing their amorous chorus from somewhere inside the fence. To hear them is to know where some of the “C” grade science fiction movies of the fifties and sixties got their inspiration for alien sounds. Beneath the halogen lights and jet fumes, the peepers were busy at work, creating next year’s generation of otherworldly choral singers.

Arriving back at the apartment, I gathered up my things and got out of the car. Next door’s cat, whose name I misheard once as “Taco”, ran to greet me. Her fur had dewy droplets from the continuing drizzle, and she desparately wanted to come In. She wasn’t picky about which “In”; she just wanted anything that wasn’t “Out”. Kitten watched through the sliding glass kitchen door as I bent over to greet Taco, who didn’t want In badly enough to tolerate a chin-chuck from a stranger. I left Taco huddled at her own door, mewing for someone to come open it. When I walked into my own apartment, Kitten showed more interest in me than she is usually wont to do.

Later in the evening Kitten vomitted rather spectacularly in the entranceway. I was concerned that she was coming down with something, but when I went to clean up I discovered she’d hacked up her very first hairball. Another rite of passage has come and gone for the Kitten; I didn’t bother to run and get my camera for this one though.

I rather enjoy life.