Ducks at the Door: April Rituals in the Wetlands

I finally sent in my taxes right before April 15, taking a deep breath and closing my eyes and stabbing at the keyboard to send them off to the IRS. They've been done, in some fashion, since February, since the day right before another Deadline of Financial Dread: FAFSA Due Date, but since you don't have to actually submit your taxes for that filing, just to know the figures, I hung onto the cyber-1040 for another two months. To me, who has lived in dread of audit ever since my accountant/husband walked out on me, procrastinating filing is as natural and sensible a decision as putting off serving a jail sentence and, possibly, even the very same thing.

You see, I am one of these people, yes, "those people," who have absolutely no interest or skill or really any desire to gain either interest or skill in matters financial. It made my former husband crazy, it makes my department's benefits advisor crazy, it makes my taxes crazy. In the years since I lost my personal accountant, my taxes have varied like the temperatures of Colorado: I'll pay thousands one year, receive thousands back in refunds the next. Some years I have actually packed an overnight bag and kept it near the front door so when the IRS suits appear at my front door I am ready to go docilely to prison. There is no way on earth I could ever defend anything I have written on my tax forms. Going to prison would be much easier and probably a lot more interesting, too. Think of the reading and writing time you'd get! I have to assume they would allow me a pen, even if if it is mightier than a sword; they even allow them on airplanes despite their lethal potential. I wonder if the TSA people have considered this.

But I started this blog after darting out to pluck my Sunday Times out of the rain puddle below my front porch. If you scroll through the photos to the left on this page to the one of my house, you may notice that the front porch is ample, big enough for several bikes, a glider, a deck chair, a massed clutter of dead plants in ceramic pots, a cluster of shovels and rakes and ice picks, and even a cooler for the neighbors' milk delivery every Wednesday, since their porch didn't have room for it. You'd think the newspaper delivery man could get the newspaper onto this kind of porch, but apparently it is easier to target the puddle just below it, the one that is approximately two square feet in size. He reliably gets the paper exactly into the puddle and only when the puddle's dried up does the paper ever make it onto the porch. Whatever happened to newspaper carriers anyway? When did they turn into middle aged men who've long since lost their throwing arm?

I started this blog today because it is pouring again, and it poured all day yesterday, too, and the lakes and rivers are all up to their banks again or a little over, and the ducks are very happy with all this, but we humans are a little sick of ducks' pre-emptory attitude of entitlement at this time of year, crossing streets regardless of crosswalks, making cars come to complete stops in the middle of rush hour. And nesting, nesting everywhere. In backyards and brush piles. On porches, sometimes you'll see them, pecking like jackhammers until you open the door to them: "Quack, quack, now cut the small talk, girl. Don't pretend you don't know. Yes, the pond in your basement. We heard you called the Pump-It-Out Squad again last night, and we want in on it, too." This is not a time of year to mess with the ducks. They are all strutting around in pairs, the drab female waddling first, the green-headed male pacing a frantic zigzag course behind her, glaring at each and every comer with eyes malignant with hostility: "Don't mess with her, fella. She's mine, she's all mine." They are extremely territorial right now; when they show up at your front door and ask the way to the pond in your basement, you just step aside and wave them on in. Sort of like G-men in this, I imagine.

So,yes. Back to the G-men. Back to taxes. Back to the flooding that seems to go on here as a matter of fact every springtime now that global warming is a way of life. Last year, it was particularly bad; in fact the southern third of the state still bears its footprint, a footprint filled with water (several new lakes, that used to be low-lying farmland) or not (the absent Lake Delton, which emptied last year when a dam on the river broke loose). And apparently, the floods still exist in our financial memory, too; after hitting my SEND button and going off to work to brag about my improved sense of self-worth now that the miserable deed was done, my co-workers asked if I'd received the doubled education credit for college education costs.

What doubled education credit, I had to ask blankly, regretting already having so blithely hit ENTER when there were at least ten hours remaining til the deadline. Apparently, since we lived here during last spring's flooding, part of an official federal disaster recovery plan along with my personal disaster recovery plan, we get extra money credited to us for our dependent's college costs. I, of course, did not, but all the attentive, responsible, and erstwhile good people of the state did, which is the greater part of Wisconsin's population, and I am vaguely happy for them in their newfound, largely undeserved wealth. I just hope all those poor victims of Hurricane Katrina had some benefit like this when their lives were truly destroyed, because our lives were in fact, hardly affected at all by last spring's flooding, unless you consider things like the ducks at the door and the ponds in the basement, which are, after all, to be expected when you live in a place as soggy and full of lakes and rivers as is Wisconsin.

But April's nearly over. Baseball's begun. And the name of Madison's minor league team? Of course! The Mallards.