'Matter of Laugh or Death,' the award-winning humor column

By Bill Dunn

Interesting observations on this thing we call life

(appearing each week in the Republican-American newspaper, Waterbury, CT)

SPRINGTIME ABUZZ WITH ACTIVITY

Finally, after an especially long and cold winter, spring is here! Comparing the springtime to winter is simply no contest.

In the spring, there is actually daylight when I’m driving to my office in the morning and back home in the evening. In the winter, it’s always dark outside. They tell me the sun comes out in the winter for a few hours in the middle of the day, but since I have no windows in my office, I personally cannot confirm that assertion.

In the spring, to get a comfortable environment inside my home, I just open a few windows, and until the State Legislature figures out how to levy a tax on air (coming soon, I’m sure), the price is free. In the winter, my furnace runs constantly just to keep my house at a chilly 65-degrees, and with the price of heating oil these days, my bank account is now as empty as a politician’s promise not to levy a tax on air.

In the spring, I have to do something I don’t particularly enjoy, mowing my lawn. But unlike when I snow-blow my driveway in the winter, when I mow my lawn in the spring, my fingers never get frostbite and I’ve yet to slip on an icy spot and fall flat on my asphalt.

In the spring, if I want to go somewhere, I just grab my car keys and sunglasses and go. In the winter, I have to bundle up in a heavy coat, scarf, hat, gloves, and boots; I have to say a quick prayer to St. Diehard, the patron saint of weak car batteries; and if my prayer is answered and my car actually starts in the sub-freezing weather, I have to drive cautiously and avoid the following: black ice, snow banks, potholes, and those crazy guys with broken defrosters who navigate their vehicles by peering through small peepholes they create in the windshield with the palm of their hand.

In the spring, I can enjoy Red Sox baseball games on the television or radio. In the winter, I have to spend the long cold nights lamenting the previous disappointing season and looking hopefully toward the upcoming season. (Wait a minute! I said that out of habit. This past winter I watched the Red Sox World Series Championship DVD three times per week from December to March. It was great!)

Anyway, although spring is by far the most enjoyable season of the year, there is one thing about spring that really bites (literally) and really sucks (again, literally). I’m talking about insects.

Despite all the wonderful aspects of spring, this is the time of year when we see the appearance of all those little—to use the technical scientific terminology—creepy crawly buzzing buggers.

I don’t know where the bugs are during the winter; maybe they’re hiding in their subterranean insect nests, complaining about the dark, getting frostbite on their six little legs when clearing snow from their tunnels, trying to avoid those crazy bugs with broken defrosters, and lamenting their disappointing favorite insect baseball team.

But wherever they hide in the winter months, as soon as the weather warms up, 8 gazillion insects suddenly appear all at once—most of them in my backyard. There are flies, ants, gnats, mosquitoes, moths, dragonflies, and hundreds of different types of spiders. (Yeah, I realize spiders are technically arachnids, but whether they have 6 legs or 8 legs, I don’t care. They’re all bugs.)

You want to know something, though? Despite the fact all those insects are buzzing around my head when I’m out in the yard, not to mention crawling up my leg and sucking blood out of my neck, because it’s so warm and sunny and colorful outside, it doesn’t bother me that much. Springtime is so gorgeous I don’t mind sharing it with the bugs.

Except for those darn wasps. I wish they’d leave me alone.

©2005