The Football Fans in our family have been bummed, ever since the Eagles didn’t make it into the play-offs. Add to that, out of all the games and all the teams they decided to root for, only once did the right team win, and that was a couple of games before the Super Bowl, so that feeling didn’t last long. Now, they did feel better after Mommy talked to our sons about the Super Bowl, (we’re still trying to understand this “good sportsmanship” thingy Mommy is trying to teach us), but they keep mumbling, “No football until August.”

Now, Daddy also makes them feel better when he reminds them that pitchers and catchers for the Phillies (baseball) are going down to Clearwater. For our family, four events remind us that spring is coming – Phil doesn’t see his shadow, the pitchers and catchers go down to Clearwater, Florida to practice, The Philadelphia Flower Show, and finally that first whiff of spring in the air. Two down – two to go!

So, we were trying to help them get out of their funk, when God gave us a tiny break in winter! It went into the 60s today. (Fahrenheit – roughly 18 - 19 degrees Celsius.) A perfect day for fun outside!

None of the guys even wanted to go out – including Axlerod and Pez, who can think of more s’periments to do outside then in, usually. They were in such a funk. Daddy, who understands ‘bout missing football, ordered us all out gruffly, but then winked at us as we left, too, so we know he just wanted to help us.

We thought about what we like to do outdoors, so we went over to the trees and grassy island in between the two sides of the street a few houses up from our home. (Mommy calls it a median strip, but she didn’t grow up in a city. In Philly, most of us call it a park, since it’s usually where people walk their dogs. We never understood what “median strip” meant, so we looked it up – “The dividing area, either paved or landscaped, between opposing lanes of traffic on some highways.”) This little park is lined with stinko-ginkgo trees. (The trees don’t stink, but every autumn, the fruit from the female trees smells like doggy doodoo, after the doggy ate beans for dinner! Phew!) We want to grow one as a bonsai, so we were looking for little seedlings on the ground. We Garden Gals could look for hours, but we glanced up, and noticed the football guys were leaning against a tree looking bored. (It’s so hard to figure out what guys like to do!)

Next, we went to our backyard to survey our garden. The only green out there is what is left of the Parcel (an herb that tastes like celery and parsley together, unless you make a soup from it – then it tastes awful – but smells better than stinko-gingko!) The hummingbird bush and fig tree were leafless, and everything else just looked dead.

We were chopping off ice from the birdbath and other water containers, so the birds could drink, but this time we didn’t notice all the guys were huddled on the picnic table sighing heavily, until Mommy came out.

She brought out some bird feed and water. At least, that got Ding and Tee’s attention. They helped their grandma pour feed into some of the aluminum trays set out to keep the feed off the ground, in case it rained. They put a tray under each of the tables, because we knew this nice weather was ending tonight and tomorrow it would rain and get cold, again.

By the time the last tray was in place, and Mommy started going in (she winked at us, too, so she was helping us to try to make the guys feel better), Tee and Ding’s sparrow friends started coming over. They can find enough seed and grubs to make it through the winter, but they love it when we put out good feed when the bugs are hibernating deeply. It hasn’t snowed or rained much this winter, so they really enjoy fresh water. (They’re too small to peck through ice.)

After they were full enough to stop and talk, they found out why all the guys were sad. They don’t have TVs and rarely fly to the local football field, so the guys had to s’plain football to them.

Boring, so we went back to futzing in our garden – removing leaves and buttonwood fuzz from the drain, covering up holes in the containers where squirrels or cats had been digging, and making sure the hibernating plants had enough water to last until tomorrow’s rain.

This time our guys stopped us. The birds had told them that the Small City Animals were gathering down in our park to play together during the good weather. We were all invited.

Our four kids are small enough that the sparrows flew them down, but, since Petey, the Pigeon, and his family weren’t around, we grown-ups flew in our helioplaneship boxcar.

Important stuff we learned today:

”       Don’t play “Duck, Duck, Goose” with ducks and geese. They do the obvious, which makes it boring for the rest of us.

”       Mice hate playing Twister, because they can only reach one spot at a time.

”       Simon Says and Mother, Mother May I are harder to play with birds, since we have to give up suggesting things to do that require forearms and paws.

”       There’s no contest in three-legged races if squirrels or mice team up together. (And then there is the whole question of, “Is that three-legged or seven-legged?”)

”       Never build a fort together where the mice take one corner to build, the ducks and geese take another corner, squirrels and birds build the third corner, and stuffies build the fourth. Not only is each corner different heights, but, since birds and squirrels build nests so differently, they separated, so it ended up being a five-sided fort, with a basement. And since we were building a place as a temporary shelter, so we could camp in it one night, each group of animals made the type of shelters they prefer. The mice dug tunnels – the basement, the squirrels hung their nest at the highest spot, the small birds built a nest in our corner, and the geese and duck – who are used to sleeping under the sky – were removing the squirrels’ nest, and our roof quicker then we could put them up.

”       And finally, the most important thing we learned – it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it with friend and laugh a lot, the feeling-bum has to disappear.

We all came home late, laughing together.