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By JEFFERSON WEAVER
Staff Writer
There are few good things I can say about the month we just endured – February, the shortest, saddest month of the calendar. The best thing I can say about February is that it is now gone for another year.
I detest the month of February.
Of course, several of my friends and co-workers celebrate birthdays during February. My Sister the Troll and my mother-in-law were born in February. I know there are some men who would not consider the latter events positive ones, but I do.
Then there’s Valentine’s Day, a holiday I actually enjoy.
But there is little else I can say in favor of February.
Unlike the sad schizophrenia of March (Is it spring? Is it winter? Who knows?) or January’s post-Christmas blues leading into the promise of a new year, February is like the weasel-voiced relative no one likes.
Despite some nice days, most of the weather is dreary, cold and raw. Deer season is long since over, quail season ends soon, and responsible hunters know most raccoons, possums, and rabbits are making plans for their new young, so small game is out.
The politics which control fox hunting make those chicken-thieving varmints inaccessible, and besides, the coyotes have pushed the foxes out. Hunting coyotes might fill that gap, except the coyotes are now hiding whilst making more, larger, chicken-thieving varmints to eat the foxes. Turkey season is an epic two months away.
I would turn to fishing, since some of the bass will soon be on the bed and the shad will run, but my beloved catfish are as slow and sluggish as the calendar. Plus, my favorite fishing companion refuses to go outside when the temperature is below 50 degrees.
I detest February. There are other reasons for my loathing of the second month.
For instance, I don’t like indecision. I like clear-cut, no-nonsense answers. February, which can’t make up its mind whether to have 28 or 29 days, waffles like a presidential candidate.
Logically, I understand the need to balance the calendar, but dadgummit, we’re talking about numbers. Give us that extra day in a good month, like May or September, when we can get some use out of it.
February is only a month away from tax time, so I can begin getting grumbly about how much the state and federal authorities are taking from me to give to someone else, and how little they give back.
I do despise the month of February.
I’m sure Shakespeare penned the words “Now is the winter of our discontent” in February. Having been at Stratford-on-Avon in February, I am sure the line was inspired by the second month. I would add the entire quote here, except that I get scatterbrained in February, and can’t find my well-worn compendium of the Bard’s work.
Of course I can’t. It’s February.
Of the tragedies that have occurred in my life, most have happened in February.
On the rare occasions I get sick and give in to whatever germ has downed everyone else, I am usually sick in February. My bout with a sort of budget version of this year’s flu came during the week of Valentine’s, thus depriving me of even a little spot of joy in this most hated month.
But I saw a little hope the other day.
The jonquils have started blooming _ just the first few bunches, here and there, but they are bursting defiantly out of the cold ground, brave little soldiers leading the way and promising that winter, and even February, would soon end.
The twin fawns that raced my car home every day last spring are now mature does, and while their filling bellies preclude anything so undignified as running across a slowly greening field on a cold afternoon, their children will be born in the next couple of months, and once again I’ll have spotted competitors as I head down the last stretch for home. I just hope they inherit their mothers’ good sense when it comes to the laws of traffic and physics.
Grizzly is slower this year than last, but anytime an old dog makes it through another winter, it’s a cause for celebration and afternoons lying in the sunshine.
The other dogs are slowly but surely losing their cabin fever. The cats are spending more time on the greatest porch in North Carolina, rather than constantly fighting over who gets what lap in the living room.
Mother Goose finally lived up to her name the other day, laying one enormous egg in the pen. Brother Grimm preened, as if he had done the hard part.
Sam is spending less time in his straw-filled shed, preferring to lie in the mud like a good hog should.
People who grumped and groused their way through this month as I did are beginning to smile again, to dare to have the slightest amount of hope that spring will, indeed, return, after the maid that is March completes her cleaning of all February’s dirt and grime, making way for April’s glorious return.
So there is hope.
But I still despise February, and there’s at least a week left as I write these words.
Maybe I can survive.
Weaver is a staff writer at The News Reporter.
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