Hazy, lazy, crazy days

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This article was published 19/07/2024 (772 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THESE are the “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer” that Nat King Cole sang about in 1963, back when I was a boy. It’s certainly muggy out there — the many fireflies prancing about and above our lawn over the past few nights have reminded me of how, for most of my life, their signalling has trumpeted the arrival of the “dog days” of summer. And this year has been no different.

Now an older man, however, I appreciate just how remarkable this perennial rejuvenation is. Over decades, generations of “lightning bugs” have glowed before me. And then each cohort has disappeared. Likewise, my friends and I have had our time to glow. Now some no longer do, some no longer can, and all of us know, full well, that it will all end, for all of us, sooner or later. Even so, what connects us to the wondrous world we live in, to a creation, endures. Nothing really ends. That is comforting.

Lately, I have been rather languorous, agreeably losing myself in reading and idleness. Ensconced on a lakefront porch, affording precious remaining time to submerging myself in the worlds and words of others, I know I am playing truant from the knight-errant-like deeds I have pledged to, hoping to prove my chivalric intentions — it will not surprise some to learn that Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote rests beside me. But I also have needs, and life never works to do what you will.

Saturday, for example, started as fine a summer’s day as any, but ended otherwise. First, unexpectedly, I was tasked with picking up parcels at a poste restante on the American side of Wellesley Island. So I found myself driving to Fineview, a New York state hamlet with an appreciable Thousand Islands view. Just as we approached this settlement, a Midland Painted Turtle edged onto the highway. Now, if I deem it safe, I always help a turtle survive those less-than-concerned motorists seemingly oblivious to such creatures — so, four-way flashers engaged, I ran to where this turtle meandered. Scooping the chelonian up, I deposited it into a stream, flowing in the direction he was heading.

Good deed done, I started back, not unhappy for being applauded by a carload of American girls passing by, just in time to witness this old man’s beneficence.

Yet the day was far from done. Not long after we returned to Canada, and I had enjoyed some reading, a refreshing swim and a follow-up siesta, I was assigned front yard chores. To my surprise, I was greeted there by an Eastern Wild Turkey , a juvenile, nonetheless impressive in size. I have seen a flock of her kind on the nearby Dupont property but have never been as close to one as now, standing less than a half-metre away. And this jennie seemed utterly indifferent to me, as she unhurriedly explored the courtyard. It was all a delight until, quite suddenly, an alarm flashed across her eyes. She issued a putt, which sounds just like it’s spelt, then several more, a distinct call warning of danger. And then I saw why — another intruder came into sight, a red fox, also a young adult, appearing from the lot’s forested edge. He was anticipating a delicious bird for dinner.

Not on my watch! I stood between them. She barely moved, didn’t even try to get away, quite accepting of my tactics.

Now, just in case you are wondering, this was not “yours truly” taking a partisan stance, favouring the Meleagrididae over the Canidae family. I just wanted to prolong an enjoyable encounter with a wild turkey. When I was a lad I heard how, once upon a time, their kind were common hereabouts. But this was my first close-up specimen. Knowing now that turkeys were extirpated by 1909, only to be reintroduced by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources in 1984, I was not going to allow the first one venturing onto my land to end up on a prowler’s menu. So “huffing and puffing” I shooed the red-headed interloper away. Bombast and theatrics forced this fox to decamp.

Wearing extravagant costuming, in my case a tangerine orange-coloured Moroccan robe, my customary garb on sluggish days, probably helped. What lookers-on were thinking I cannot say. They didn’t approach.

When neighbours did come out, delighted to watch our visitor make her unruffled way into a roadside ditch to enjoy a feast of seeds, they also shared breaking news. Only minutes before, an assassin had attempted to murder the former U.S. president, Donald Trump. And that is how my Saturday, July 13, ended — a hazy and lazy summer day went crazy, which no one foresaw.

I am no fan of Mr. Trump. He is no friend of a free Ukraine. But America’s “dog days” won’t ever be over, or somehow come to an end, through the barrel of a gun. And Canadians and Ukrainians alike, whether we like it or not, need America. So God bless and protect America.

All of it, including Donald Trump.

Lubomyr Luciuk is a professor of political geography at the Royal Military College of Canada and a senior research fellow of the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto.