When hell freezes over

With a full moon and the coming thaw, it's apparent rutting season has arrived. Sami keeps rubbing her cloaca in my face and pinching me with her beak. Humans are irritable. The trees are starting to bud and song birds are once again heard over the cacophony of crows. This is the moment of limbo, where piles of snow, ice, sand and garbage - a tiramisu of winter's legacy - begin to give way to Spring's coming warmth. But it's not yet here in Waterbury. The ground is frozen, the wind still cold. Grass, the harbinger of Spring's first shock of green, has not yet arrived. Sand from the snow trucks still covers the streets with mud (if it's raining) and dirt and dust (if not). But it's coming soon. There may be another snow storm or storms and they will only depress us for a moment and vanish quickly. For the next six weeks as it warms we are once again exposed to each other, a mass of humanity crawling out of our houses from hibernation; we begin to congregate outside, our pale skin and squinty eyes exposed to the elements and the copious amounts of strewn litter not yet hidden by nature's seasonal greening.