Most of us have anxiously awaited spring’s arrival. But with so many distractions it has largely gone by unnoticed except for the thick layer of yellow pollen coating our world.

One of my most cherished signs of spring are the lightning bugs that live in the ditch next to my bedroom window.

Early this morning I thought I was seeing things. 5 lovely flashing bugs were dancing between the pines. What a wonderful way to show the way for spring.

This will be a spring to remember because with it came a bug called covid-19.

Where did this thing come from?

It took everyone by surprise except Sylvia Browne who wrote about it years ago in End of Days or maybe Dean Koontz who describes it in an Odd Apocalypse novel about zombies and haints.

Writers and other prognosticators described these things years before they ever arrived for real.

It’s much better to read about it in books inspired by the imagination than experience it on the front pages of the newspaper.

Thank goodness most of us only experience these stories by reading about them, not a firsthand experience.

The closest I ever came to such an experience was on a visit to France in 2006 during the mad cow disease scare.

A fellow traveler came down with the disease and succumbed to it a year later, well within the bounds of contagion.

It made the papers, since such things needed to be publicly disclosed.

As far as I know, no one else in our party contracted the disease, but information on the subject was not forthcoming. Quite a few made it to the cemetery though.

I wasn’t invited to the funerals.