The Scariest Thing That A Runner Can Encounter In Spring

Spring. Such a beautiful time of year. The natural world, released from the barren grip of winter, once again becomes saturated with life. Fruits swell with promise, flowers release themselves from the confinement of their bulbs. All of nature is at peace.

Or so it seems.

In fact, the arrival of spring brings with it a threat to runners everywhere.

If you have ever run close to a body of water, you will have probably come across one of the most graceful and majestic birds in existence – the swan. When facing this creature, you may feel tempted to stop in your tracks and edge slightly closer in order to gain a better view of its serene beauty. However, I will warn you now, if you come across a swan between the months of April and June, do not under any circumstance approach the bird. If you value your health and general well-being, you will run in the opposite direction.

In between the months of April and June, swans experience some sort of severe hormonal trauma. This coincides with the birth of their offspring, which they instinctively want to protect. It is the equivalent of a year’s worth of severe PMS.
Symptoms include:

1. Heightened aggression.
2. Heightened hostility.
3. Heightened anger.
4. Heightened rage.
5. A heightened capacity to become generally pissed off.
6. The will to injure any unfortunate creature that strays to close to their aggressive, hostile, angry, enraged, generally pissed off being.

All of these things combine to transform this:

http://www.masspictures.net

Into this:

This is an image that would inspire fear in even the bravest of men. This swan is pissed off and hormonal. It is a creature at the mercy of its maternal instincts. It is deadly. Seriously, even Atilla the Hun would run a mile.

Aggressive swans are not a force that should be treated too lightly by passing runners. Let me demonstrate through the use of the following images.

Here is a swan taking on a goose:

http://www.peterloud.co.uk

Here is a swan taking on a dog:

http://www.norfolk.iwitness24.co.uk

And, finally, here is a swan taking on a full-sized deer:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Now, that is one angry mass of feathers.

However, I was not attacked by this ferocious creature. This week, on my run, I was attacked by a moorhen.

A swan is about a quarter the height of the average man. For those who don’t know, a moorhen is approximately 1/12th of the height of the average man. It is not a large bird. It would probably take at least thirty enraged moorhens to seriously injure an adult human being.

Nevertheless, when the excessively hormonal moorhen started to run towards me, I freaked out. Big time. I have never run so fast in my life.

The way towards improving my running times has been revealed. Evidently, I must steal a moorhen, bend it to my will and train it to chase after me whilst I run. It’s astonishing that I’ve never thought of this blatantly obvious solution before.

Or I could just stop eating as much cake, thus losing a bit of weight, therefore becoming light enough to run faster but, unfortunately, that doesn’t seem like a plausible option…

Love, Love, Love…

I haven’t been running as much this week due to the fact that it has been raining. Torrentially. Every day. I know that I can’t expect much more, living in Britain and all, but this is getting slightly ridiculous. However, not only is the weather the very definition of miserable, it is also erratic and seems to be suffering from a severe case of bipolar disorder. In fact, the weather is downright treacherous. I will wake to torrential rain. Hours later, there will be slight break in rain. The sun will shine pleasantly through the clouds. I will don running gear, crack out the ipod, and tie my trainers securely, doubles knots and all. My hand will literally be on the door of the house… aaand the rain will come storming in again.

Anyway, the last thing anyone wants to hear is a Brit complaining about weather. It is winter after all. I should reserve my dissatisfaction for the summer. I had always thought that winter was the season in which wild animals of various sorts retreated to their burrows to slumber through the snow and ice, or, in Britain’s case, the rain. But what I encountered on one of my runs this week seemed to suggest otherwise.

I was running through the park when I spotted two squirrels frolicking in the field. They were chasing each other, occasionally pausing to nuzzle each other affectionately. ‘What a nice, romantic display of squirrel love’, I thought. Two squirrels, separated all summer by the time-consuming instinct to collect and hoard nuts, reunited for one last day together before the truly frigid conditions of late January and February swoop in. They were so playful and innocent that I couldn’t help but crack a smile, despite the fact that I was nearing the end of my run and my muscles were starting to ache. A lot.

Then, right before my unprepared eyes, they started doing something else. Something that could still be conceived as playful but wasn’t innocent at all. Suddenly, the cuteness of the squirrels diminished and they more accurately resembled the rats that feverishly breed and multiply unseen in the city’s underbelly.

My parents are doctors and, as a result, I have had constant exposure to the graphic front covers of the BMJ, which is doctor slang for British Medical Journal. Nothing that I had seen on the cover of that magazine was as graphic as this.

I’m pretty sure that this is the time of the year when squirrels are supposed to be conserving their energy, striving to make it through the cold season on the meagre supply of nuts that they managed to bury in the warmer months. They should barely have the energy to crawl from their nests in the morning, let alone prance around a field or engage in such X-rated activities. These, however, were some seriously energised squirrels. Their little bodies were vibrant with it. Such love. Such passion. Such unashamed indecency.

Needless to say, I averted my eyes in order to give the tiny lovers the privacy that they so evidently did not desire. I can only hope that they have gone into hibernation by the time of my next run.