Every year it happens the same way.

All winter long the soggy bottomland of Foxley Hill is still and quiet. The birds have left and the frogs have buried themselves deep in the mud. Nothing stirs and the snow melt is clear and lifeless. The animals of Foxley Hill have grown used to the quiet. Then suddenly, without warning, on a fine March day the swamp erupts into a non-stop ruckus – a choir of cacophony.  With this onslaught to their ears, the animals know two things:  (1) the Colonel has arrived, and (2) winter is officially over.

“Who is The Colonel?” you ask. He is a very loud, very distinguished and very handsome Red-Winged Blackbird. It is his duty to protect the swamp – a job he takes very seriously. He is also a bit of a ladies man, enticing half a dozen female Red-winged Blackbirds to share the swamp with him.  He is Colonel Robert A. Redwing, Commander of the Skies, Northern Territory Division.

The Colonel has been watching the signs down south where he winters in the swamps of western Louisiana. Just when the bugs get a little too thick and the alligators a little too active from the warming sun, he decides it’s time to go home. It takes him a couple weeks to make the 1,130 mile trip from Starks, La., to Foxley Hill. And by the time he arrives home he wants the whole of Foxley Hill to know it!

Waving his Official Papers about he trills and yells and dive-bombs any moving target. He constantly calls out “Hear me now! I Colonel Robert Redwing have declared this to be my summer territory!”  Woe to any unsuspecting animal who hasn’t been warned of his arrival! They soon get a peck on the head or at the very least a frightful start. Eventually all the new noise in the swamp rouses the sleeping frogs who then join in the spring chorus with their peeping. With their combined song, winter is officially declared to be over.

Roberta J. Foxley sighs to herself every year at The Colonel’s arrival. As land owner she is expected to go and greet the Bearer and Decider of Spring. She just wishes she didn’t have to watch her head in order to do it! “I mean really, why couldn’t the robins arrive first and bring spring? They’re such a chipper bunch.” 

Jenny Springtail was going through some old pictures, diary entries and the like when she found this image. Immediately she was taken back to a beautiful spring day a couple of years ago. There he was, Hal Swampwater, the most poetic frog she ever knew.

That spring her mother had been after her to, “Find a nice young rabbit. Start a family. Get a job.” Jenny would have none of it, for it was a glorious spring that year. The kind where all the blooms seem to happen at once and the sun never stops shining and all the breezes are mild. In Jenny’s mind, that kind of weather would be wasted on family-starting or job-hunting. Instead, every morning she and Hal hopped down to the Hidden Fish Pond. There they would twist flowers into wreaths and necklaces and talk about REAL things like love, hopes, and dreams.

Jenny didn’t know it then but Hal had fallen head over heels in love with her. His heart nearly broke in half when she married Ted – a large buck rabbit – in September. Looking back, Jenny could see that Hal loved her. But it was too late now.

Jenny sighed, put away her old diary and drawings and looked out the window. If only she could have one more spring like that.