I’m sitting alone in the kitchen, drinking coffee and listening to a soft, rhythmic scraping sound that I assume is coming from somewhere outside – a door being planed two gardens over, maybe – because I know I’m alone in the house.
At some point it dawns on me that the sound is actually coming from within the kitchen. I look up to see the dog’s bed, minus the dog, slowly migrating across the floor. I watch for a moment in mute horror, trying to summon my rational side.
Eventually I realise the tortoise is propelling the bed from underneath, making his way toward the back door. He will do this every morning for the next few weeks – leaving his nightly resting place, or rather bringing it with him – in a premature bid for freedom. Once again I’m reminded that while the later harbingers of spring (blossoms, bluebells) are often stirring, the first signs are always a little ominous.
The next day, I’m on a bus when my wife sends me a picture of two dozen crows sitting in the bare branches of our cherry tree. “A murder,” she writes. I text back something about it being normal crow behaviour, although I have no idea.
Two days later I am in my shed at sunset when a flash of movement catches my eye. The small window above my computer screen frames a rectangle of western sky, with a section of trellis running along its bottom edge. On top of the trellis sits a squirrel – the squirrel – in silhouetted profile, his left eye looking down at me. I have not seen the squirrel in weeks, and now he’s less than 3ft from my head.
“You,” I say. He cocks his head as if to say: That’s right. Me.
Unnerved, I get up and go into the house. I sit at the kitchen table, watching it get dark. The front door opens and closes. My wife walks in.
“Busy day?” she says, putting a shopping bag on the table.
Yes,” I say. “I was just…”
“What’s the dog bed doing over here?” she says. She picks it up. There is nothing under it.
The weekend, when it arrives, is unseasonably warm. As we walk through the park with the dog, my wife and I debate whether it’s time to lift the chicken wire off the beds.
“If we don’t do it soon,” I say, “the plants will grow through the wire and we’ll never get it off.”
“I just don’t want that bastard squirrel digging up the bulbs,” my wife says.
“I saw him the other day,” I say. “He plans to take all we have.”
“He told you that, did he?” she says.
“He made himself clear,” I say. We reach the turn at the far corner of the park, where white knots of snowdrops are poking through the damp grass.
“It was weird, that murder of crows,” my wife says.
“You enjoy a collective noun, don’t you?” I say.
“I do, yes,” she says.
“I hate collective nouns,” I say.
“It’s because I know so many,” she says.
“What’s owls?” I say.
“Owls,” she says. “Owls is…”
“They’re meant to be poetic, but they’re horrible and pointless.”
“I do know owls,” she says.
“And there’s no governing body,” I say. “People just make them up. An executive session of camels. An appropriation of toads. Stupid.”
“I like them,” she says.
“We should just use flock for everything.”
“I can see this is one of your things,” my wife says.
“Flock of horses, flock of bees. Much simpler.” My wife enforces a moment of silence as we turn the final leg back towards the car.
“Owls is parliament,” I say.
“That’s it,” she says. “A parliament of owls.”
“Yick,” I say.
When we get home my wife starts pulling up the nails holding the chicken wire in place. It’s so warm I decide to open all the doors, including the back one, which now sticks so badly that I have to punch it at the top while kicking it at the bottom. On the fourth kick it gives way, letting in the spring air. Behind me I hear a familiar drag and think: the sound of a solitary dog bed flocking south.
