Plover Love

Sometimes the smallest things have more power over us than they think. As spring gets chugging here, not only are we inundated with bulbs that seem to appear out of nothing and explode in a floral rainbow, but zillions of baby animals are born. That's my favorite part of the year. Living in a country area, this population explosion becomes even more noticeable- fields of lambs, foals and calves on every side- gorgeous. But the cutest award would have to go to the plovers.

Don't get me wrong, normally I hate plovers. When they're nesting they commandeer a field and dive bomb anyone who goes near like rabid magpies with PMS. They get so vicious my kids will walk the long way around rather than incur avian wrath by cutting through the field (I guess that's the plover's aim). But nesting is all done for the year now. The babies have hatched and, well, have you ever SEEN a baby plover?

Here I am driving along our road drumming my fingers on the steering wheel and whistling an outdated tune the radio station seems to favor when yikes! Stand on the brakes. The plover family is crossing the road --mum and a flock of itty bitty things the size of large pebbles. They hear the car. They drop, right there on the road. Now they look like a sprawled pile of pebbles, living scree. Seriously, if I hadn't seen them drop I might have driven over them unknowingly. But there they are, still and silent and covering the road where I want to go. I wait. I turn off the car. Nothing. In the end I have to get out and shoo them off the road before I can drive away.

Sometimes it is the smallest things in life that stop us. Why? Because we care about them, and maybe that's not such a bad thing.