Shortly after I moved here I received one of those documents that make the e-mail rounds. It was based on the then-popular “you might be a redneck” comedy act, only each stanza of this one ended with “you might live in Ohio.”
The joke I remember from it was “If you’ve turned on the furnace, then the air conditioner, then the furnace again, all in the same day, you might live in Ohio.”
The original writer must have had autumn in mind.
Ah, autumn! Or, in some respects, ugh — autumn!
Of course, I could be getting a little cranky because this year we’re paying for autumn but not getting it. If you’re new to the area, be assured that the trees are normally much, much prettier this time of year. They usually stop at red and orange and yellow enroute from green to brown. This year, not so much.
If I were an Asian ladybug, I would be insulted by this and would choose a more picturesque locale for my winter resort. But Asian ladybugs have no asethetic sensibility at all, it seems. So they have decided to make their annual invasion of our homes, something that we usually overlook when anticipating the delights of the fall. We think of the glorious fall colors, the crisp air and the deep blue skies, the first faint scent of woodsmoke in the air — but not the billions and billions of small, crunchy monsters that find their way into, well, everything.
(The Asian ladybug is one of the reasons I think we should keep government on a short leash. Were it not for government trying to do us a favor, we would not have them at all.)
We are also beginning the busy season not for retailers but for autobody repair companies. This is because we’re entering the time of year when deer go berserk. It is always possible in this part of the world to be toodling down the road, minding your own business, and suddenly have a deer in your lap, along with a lot of broken glass. Never the brightest of creatures, deer are fond of thinking that the grass is greener on the other side of the road, but then, halfway across, losing their bearings and forgetting which side was their destination. And a confused deer just stands there.
But an insane deer is worse, a lot worse. In the autumn, all deer are insane.
The bucks go into rut, meaning that their reproductive urges triumph over every other instinct. A buck on the prowl is not romantic. He is combative. He wishes to do battle with other bucks, to gain mating rights to such does as may be in the vicinity. The problem is, to a crazy buck everything that isn’t himself or a doe is another buck. There are cases on record of bucks smashing into and through sliding glass doors and into houses because they saw their reflections, thought they were other bucks, and went on the attack. You never want a deer rampaging in your house, but you most especially don’t want a sex-crazed one.
They have been known to attack stopped cars. They have been known to attack people who are going about their business. (This phenomenon is made worse by their having lost fear of people. Even a “tame” buck turns ugly in rutting season. That’s why a buck that for several days in September decided to graze in my yard was each time I saw him treated to a sting to the hindquarters from Mr. BB gun — I want him to run the other way when he encounters humans, most especially me.)
And of course they pursue does, who hang out in groups like junior high school girls. When you see a small herd of does crossing the road at night this time of year, there’s a pretty good chance that very soon thereafter you’ll see a buck, headed for them at full speed, oblivious to anything except the objects of his desire. Deer are like people in that respect, though we’re better at not becoming hood ornaments.
These are the things that we do not add to the equation when we look forward to the melancholy excitement that is autumn. We forget that when we dress to be comfortable outside early in the morning, we’ll be roasting by midday. We overlook the arrival of the black-and-orange house guests that will be on our ceilings and in our lighting fixtures for the next few months. We don’t concentrate on the terror of driving the back roads at night and becoming birth control for deer.
Nor do we remember how a temperature of 50 degrees feels so cold in October but so warm in March.
Autumn is here, and though it’s not as pretty as some (most? all?) others have been, there is still the air of happy anticipation that the season brings.
So we rake the leaves and try to do something useful with them, and we clean out the gutters or at least say we’re going to, and even in an autumn that is not the prettiest, we are somehow content.
Dennis E. Powell is crackpot-at-large to Open for Business. Powell was an award-winning reporter in New York and elsewhere before moving to Ohio and becoming a full-time crackpot. You can reach him at dep@drippingwithirony.com.