Spring springs

Our annual Spring Break revelers showed up today.

No, no wet T-shirt contests or drunken frat boys passed out on our lawn. Our Spring Breakers are a duck couple that's appeared every year about this time for the last five years or so. They spend three or four weeks hanging out in and around our tiny backyard pond, swimming little laps and plundering our ground birdfeeder, before they disappear until we see them a year later.

We've grown accustomed to each other. Their first spring here, they were very skittish and would bolt to the skies at the first sign of life on our upstairs deck. Now, I'm able to walk by them, a mere 10 feet away. They scold me -- I don't speak duck, but I know a four-letter quack when I hear one -- and they waddle about indignantly, but they stay put.

I don't know where they were before they showed up or where they go when they leave. I'm sure I could do some research on duck migration patterns in our part of the country and figure it out, but I don't have to know everything. I'm just happy that our yard is a quiet little stopover between their winter and summer quarters. A chance for them to spend a little alone time together, get themselves in a row, if you will, before they repair on to that whole crazy duck scene on one of the nearby lakes.

Mid-March begins my favorite two months or so in this part of the country. Conditions are still tenuous, Lord knows, with 60-degree days yielding to 30-degree days and vice versa, and with another winter storm or two (or more) possible. But such storms come and go quickly and, meantime, there will be a few -- though never enough -- purely perfect days in late April and early May. The first will arrive after a day of rain, with an absolute explosion of green and the realization, "damn, I need to mow the lawn already."

See, we earn spring around these parts, and so we enjoy it.

Another sign of the season: While walking early in the morning a couple of days ago, earbuds piping music into my head, I noticed some other sound in the lulls between songs -- robins and cardinals singing in the trees. I took my earbuds out and enjoyed listening to their bold pickup lines: "Hey, baby, give me your user name; I'm gonna tweet you." "Don't forget, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." "C'mon, doll, I'm goin' out on a limb for you." "Baby, you could knock me over with a feather." (Yeah, I don't know how they get any action with those lines, either.)

Heck, even our football coach is in his spring plumage -- Spittle Bo P is seen on today's sports page with an actual smile on his face, pronouncing his satisfaction with the first day of spring practice. This sends a thrill across Husker Nation, which carefully monitors Pelini's emotional temperature for cues on whether to feel hope or despair. Another day or two of good practices, and he'll be mugging around in a sweater vest and coke-bottle glasses in homage to a couple of his new Big 10 colleagues, and maybe even grabbing Taylor Martinez's cell phone and exchanging some good-natured texts with the QB's old man.

The smiles will come fewer and farther between as summer and fall proceed, of course, and by mid-November Bo will be stroking out on the sidelines and chewing up and spitting out referees and disobedient quarterbacks again.

Similarly, spring's hope and promise will fade for my duck tenants crowded on the lakefront, who will come to be reminded that ducks really are kind of disgusting, crapping every which where they please, and the robins and cardinals, who will grow sick of their love nests after they're transformed into nurseries, filled with that constant, infernal cheep-cheep-cheep.

But for now, Spring Fever dawns -- for ducks, robins and cardinals and even grouchy football coaches.