Florida Air Combat

     

Northern Mockingbird By Karney Lee U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

         Connecticut has the Robin. Indiana and Illinois share the Cardinal. Florida? We have the Mockingbird. We get to share our state bird with Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. To read James Audubon’s description of this small gray bird, one would think it was a delightful addition to the bird kingdom. “They are not the soft sounds of the flute or of the hautboy that I hear, but the sweeter notes of Nature's own music. The mellowness of the song, the varied modulations and gradations, the extent of its compass, the great brilliancy of execution, are unrivalled.” See LINK.

          The bird Audubon was describing is not the bird I remember as a child.  Most of the year, we’d see them flitting harmlessly through the trees. But heaven help the unaware pedestrian during mockingbird mating season. Around April of every year, the birds pair up, build a nest and begin to aggressively attack anything or anyone that dares to come within range.

          As a child, it was my chore to walk the dog. I’d grab the leash, the dog, and a piece of rope. We’d ease out the front door and stand on the stoop, the dog anxious to get about her business. I peered around the air potato vine that circled the porch to see if I could spot the gray birds or their bright white flash of wings. As an aside, the air potato vine was introduced in 1905 and unknown to us in the early 1970s, would be considered an invasive plant by the state of Florida by the end of the 1990s. My granddad called it a billabong. Back to my mockingbird tale…

          I could hear the squawking in the tree growing in the middle of the front yard, but there were no birds to be seen. I stepped off the porch and raised the hand holding the rope over my head and began swirling it in a circle over my head as the dog and I cautiously took a step out from under the vine. I heard the angry shriek and the furious beating of wings over my head and ducked lower. With my body now as twisted as a contortionist in a circus side show, bent over with my arm swinging the rope over my head, the dog and I raced down the driveway toward the sidewalk. Still not safe, we continued past two houses before the bird gave up and returned to the nest.

          The dog and I could walk down the street and back in relative peace. But as we approached the house, the rope went into the air and the dance began again.

          My father would mow the lawn with a hat anchoring a towel draped over his head and falling past his shoulders. Except for the yard gloves protecting his hands and the grass stains on his sneakers, he looked a lot like a Bedouin traversing the desert, the mockingbirds screaming, circling and diving at his head like miniature Egyptian vultures fighting over particularly interesting carrion.

          Neighborhood cats seemed to wise up pretty quickly when it came to hunting mockingbirds. From the front porch, I could see the great hunters stalking their prey, confidently slinking across the lawn toward the tree in our front yard and out of my sight. They usually re-appeared within moments, a slash of terrified tabby running low to the ground as fast as their little legs could carry them. The mockingbirds dive bombed relentlessly until the poor cats dashed under a nearby car and sit there, eyes wide in fright. Cats usually didn’t make that mistake twice.

          In the last few years, sitting in the safety of my screened porch I've listened to the birds sing from the trees in the backyard. From my living room, I can open the front windows wide and listen and with my ever-hopeful cats, watch as all kinds of birds splash in sheer joy in the birdbath. I now have an appreciation for the songs they sing—even the mockingbird.

          But come April, I’ll still have a rope handy.

Summertime

            Many things bring back memories of my childhood in Florida. Among them are sights and sounds. One of the best and quickest ways for me to travel back? The smells.

           Where does the smell of pine trees take you? It takes me back to Christmas morning in just a few seconds.

The smell of chicken roasting? That’s the ticket to memories of big noisy family dinners at my grandparents’ house.

Suntan lotion? I’m back baking on the beach as a teenager with my friends, radios humming at our heads.

            To me, few smells trigger memories of summers past more than the aroma of newly-cut grass. I drove through a cloud of it yesterday and smiled. One of my chores as a teenager was mowing the front lawn. I knew the smell of fresh cut grass up close and personal.

            St. Augustine grass seems to be the main type of grass growing in South Florida. It grows well in hot sunny spots and in the sand that covers most of the state. When I lived in St. Louis for a few years, I became vaguely aware that St. Augustine is not universally grown and a friend from Kentucky recently pointed out that not only was it not the grass of choice in northern climes, it was considered a weed. To him, the fescues and bluegrasses of his native state are not as coarse, and are more appealing and easier on the feet.

            But back to memories of mowing the weeds um, lawn. I fussed about it most of the time, but I actually liked it. Don’t tell my mother.  Let her have her fond memories of forcing me to do hard, manual labor in the hot, Florida sun.

            It was a challenge to mow the lawn in precise lines while ducking under the Florida holly tree in the front yard. When mockingbirds were nesting, I had to push the mower with one hand while swinging a dog leash over my head to keep the protective birds from taking chunks out of my scalp. The cut grass would turn my white sneakers a beautiful green and the insects would make my ankles and calves scratch. Did I say I actually liked this?

            When I was finished, I’d sit in a lawn chair on the driveway with a cold lemonade or tall glass of ice water and cool off. The mower made ticking sounds beside me as it cooled off, too. The lawn was once again neat and tidy and I was once again covered in grass and rubbing my ankles together to scratch the itch.

            That smell.

            It promised long, salty days at the beach followed by barbeques in the backyard. It promised Fourth of July celebrations, firecrackers and sparklers, Girl Scout camp and late night swims in the backyard pool. It promised vacations to cool mountains and cold mountain streams. It promised tossing and turning to try to get to sleep under a fan barely moving the warm night air. It promised the sound of crickets carrying on their quiet, insistent concert in hibiscus bushes outside of bedroom windows. It promised long hours chasing tiny flashes from lightning bugs, a mayonnaise jar in one hand, metal lid with holes punched in it in the other.  It promised coconut scented suntan lotion and big sunhats, warm breezes and clear skies, and lying on blankets in backyards at night giggling with friends and looking at stars. 

            Yes, the smell of newly cut grass still makes me smile at the sweetness of summers past and promises kept.

(c) Copyright 2012 Ruth Hartman Berge

Pictures from Photobucket

Halloween

My grandmother and my daughter around 1996.

     This year, for Halloween, the kids danced between raindrops while they held on to their costumes, hats, masks and goody bags. It was another windy Halloween in Florida. As far back as I can remember, Halloween was always windy and spooky.

     When I was a child, we usually put together our own costumes out of our parents castaways and added a couple of store-bought touches like vampire teeth, a scary mask or a tiara. We’d knock politely on a door and yell "trick or treat" as loudly as we could. The resident who was forced to answer lucky enough to be answering the door would lean out with a big bowl of candy. Oohing and aahing over the costumes, they’d drop candy in our bags. We’d yell our thanks and run to the next house.

     The year I was seven, my mother was pregnant with my brother who was born on November 3. She’d answer the door and the little eyes of the trick-or-treaters would grow huge at her gigantic belly. My brother always did know how to steal the show.

     When I moved to St. Louis with my ex-husband and our son, I found out that different areas of the country do things slightly differently for Halloween.

     Our first Halloween in the mid-west, we dressed up my son as Batman, and took him trick-or-treating with his young cousins. I learned that in St. Louis, when you knock on a door, you have to have a riddle ready. The riddle is asked, an answer attempted, and THEN the candy is dropped in your treat bag.

     At the first door the kids approached, the unsuspecting homeowner opened the door, and our young son marched right in the house. He marched down the hall and disappeared. All of us stood there with mouths gaping watching him go. Then we started calling him, but apparently whatever he found in the room at the end of the hall was much more interesting than we were at the moment. Finally, our niece was invited in to collect him and found him sitting next to the man of the house watching a football game.

     After I moved back to Florida, I used to take my two around a nearby neighborhood–one with a large number of homes and kids running all over the place, hysterical on candy highs from smuggled sweets crammed in their mouths between houses. As crazy as it got, even when we could no longer feel our feet, it was still fun.

     When my kids were still little enough to enjoy going trick-or-treating with Mom, we’d always end up at my grandmother and aunt’s house. By then, the children were exhausted, make-up was slipping off faces and costumes were askew, but my grandmother and aunt always made a fuss. My kids were always proud that they had "scared" or impressed their relatives with their costumes.

     My grandmother and aunt have been gone several years now and my children are now adults. Funny. I used to think it would be the big things I’d miss when my two little ones were grown. I never thought it could be the mad scramble for the right costume, the numb feet, the arguments over candy, or the laughing at the can of Coca-cola someone gave out as a treat one year.

     I have to admit I missed it all when I sat quietly reading a book alone on Halloween as I waited for one more little trick-or-treater to find their way to my door.