Early summer morning from the bedroom window
I was awoken in the early hours, just as dawn was breaking, by my husband – trying to punch me in the face! No, I’m not a battered wife: he’s just a very vivid dreamer. On occasions, he has dreamt that he’s a wolf, or is being pursued through the streets with a crowd following him. This time, apparently, he was trying to ward off a street seller who was persuading him forcibly to buy a fizzy drink. I take heart that my strictures about junk food have found root in his subconscious!
It’s surprising that we get any sleep at all at this time of year, what with the dog demanding to be let out at all hours so that he can eat grass or bark at hedgehogs and the cat, who is small but fierce, keening like a banshee below the bedroom window to defend his territory from the large and thuggish tom-cat next door. This morning, as my husband and I lay awake in the dawn listening to these various noises, we heard the (temporarily) local cuckoo.
“There’s the cuckoo,” he said, “unless it’s Fred again.”
I was trying to get back to sleep, but my ears pricked up.
“What do you mean, unless it’s Fred again?”
“Didn’t I tell you? Fred impersonates birds really well. He has a whole range in his repertoire. He does a really good cuckoo. He said that a cuckoo came right up to his house the other day, before it realised that it was only a human and flew off again.”
I considered. I’ve been writing enthusiastically about hearing the cuckoos for weeks now. Since Fred has seen at least one of them, and it’s unlikely that in fact it was he out there before 5 a.m. today, it can’t always have been his impersonations that I’ve heard. Nevertheless, if you should happen to look over my recent cuckoo posts again, I feel duty bound to warn you that all the cuckoo noises I’ve recorded may not have emanated from cuckoos. Instead, a burly Yorkshireman named Fred may have been responsible.
Nothing else in my day today matched its surreal beginning! Perhaps I’m going cuckoo!
Christina James, crime novelist 
If the tree falls and nobody hears, how do we know it has made a sound … if the cuckoo sings and you believe it’s a cuckoo, that’s good enough to make you believe in spring? (I think that works …
Hahahaha! I think that to have Fred cuckooing outside and to know that it’s Fred would probably be good enough in all its wonderful absurdity to make me believe madly in spring, even if he were to do it in the depths of winter! I just love your positivity, Jo, and I do take your point! :)))))
You are absolutely not going cuckoo, Christina. Not unless Fred can project to this side of the channel. There are definitely cuckoos around in numbers, so ventriloquist or not, I am convinced most of your cuckoos were just that. They are in good voice this year! Perhaps they feel they have to make up for lost time 🙂
Phew! That’s cleared that one up, then, unless Koos has developed new skills without your knowing! 😉 It has definitely been a good year for them and we’ve heard several of them on walks where Fred certainly wasn’t!