View from the North 40: February, what are you doing?

February? Oh, right, I’m supposed to hate February.

It’s the second month in a row without a vacation-worthy holiday — after that Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year glut of free time.

The rest of the world is talking about spring and that liar Punxsutawney Phil, but up here in the near-Arctic no skunks are out, no bears have emerged looking for tourists to eat, sewer lines haven’t thawed, horses aren’t shedding, only the impatient cows (and the ones seduced by errant, vagabond bulls) are calving, the sun still hasn’t come up before I get to work and a bunch of other really hurtful stuff.

Did you know that most babies in the U.S. are born in September? Do you know why? Because they were conceived in December and January. Also known as the party month and the after-party month, respectively. But February? People are just tired of trying to put on that happy face. As if one more month of cold and dark and the unbearable, soulless void of — well, I’ll save that one. This might not be the place or time to get into that.

Apparently I’m supposed to move on and get over it and accept the things I cannot make the way I deem they should be. Serenity. Courage. Wisdom. blah blah blah. Basically it boils down to the fact that February traditionally sucks because it’s still winter.

I know.

Not this year.

Not even up here in Zone 3.

This week: temps in the 40s and 50s. Next week: the same.

I had a box elder bug in my shower. (He won a spa day, got to go swimming in a waterfall pool then ended his evening with a little deep sea diving. No word yet on how much he liked that.)

I got bit by a wasp. (A hasty investigation into its crimes and subsequent death showed that it spent the night in the pants I had hung up to wear the next morning, but it failed to exit the pants before I got myself zipped up into them. Yes, I got bit twice. No, it wasn’t where you are thinking. Not there either, but close. And, no, my husband did not and can not lance the bite and suck out the poison. That doesn’t even work with snake venom.)

A skunk got hit out on the highway, but it wasn’t by my house so I could be happy about the fact that the temps were warm enough to lure slumbering rodents out of hibernation. (I mean, I am saddened and aggrieved about this senseless death of one of Mother Nature’s gloriously odoriferous harbingers of spring. Hi, PETA.)

More importantly, though, I have been able to sit outside — comfortably — and listen to a great horned owl brag about its babies and a whole mess of huns call out to each other with their hoarse, raspy voices, like rusty hinges. I think that sound is what serves as a sexy, come hither call to start dating and hook up come March.

Their voices are coming from every direction, so I assume they’re still working out the dating details and arranging to “bring a friend for your friend’s friend to meet while we go on a first date” kind of stuff. It’s going to take a few weeks before they start discussions about buying a house and having kids.

In the meantime, though, I have been enjoying February for a change.

Fortunately for February, this is a leap year, so the month has one extra day to try to disappoint me. It could happen.

(Then, of course, March — that red-headed stepchild of a month — could always pack a punch. These months just can’t be trusted at [email protected].)