sounds of the neighborhood

Is spring really here? We've had six sunny days in a row. And this afternoon, the neighbors were playing their music and washing their car. Noone washes their car in the wintertime. We just let the dust accumulate to give our vehicles a grayish cast, a reflection of the gray in the sky.

This morning as I was walking to school, I heard a cacophony of cawing, a sound that is raw to the ears except that in college, I used to listen to the same sound all the time roosting in the trees around Lake Alice. I could not see the birds in the trees at all, but it took my brain only half an instant to make the connection. Lake Alice had all those bats, too.