I was gone from the office, working in the hospital for a prolonged stretch, and my office staff said that pesky pecker stopped coming during my absence. One night, I came to the office to do some paper work when everyone was gone and he came back, looking at me on the window ledge—staring at me before he started pecking on the glass a few feet away from my computer.  Damn I thought, doesn’t he have some nice trees nearby with juicy bugs to eat, rather than peck on my window right next to me?

As my readers may remember from my previous post, I thought he was insane, or perhaps was pecking on too many marijuana plants here locally, or even more bizarre, that he was in fact a military spy drone, created to spy on me or somehow communicate with me due to some of my past adventures and publications.

So, I thought about it some more and I realized that most peckers have a rapid jackhammer pecking technique on houses or wood. But this guy—his pecks seemed to have a rhythm or definite pauses, some long and some short, mixed together.  Similar to my survival training experience where I was kept in a small box and Chinese music was blasted over it for days on end, I actually began to dream or hallucinate in Chinese, even though I didn’t know the language.  Thus, the purpose of psychological warfare.  So, it seems, I began to hallucinate the rhythm of this woodpeckers long and short pecks until they were embedded in my subconscious.

Although my working diagnosis remained that he was insane, I gave this poor creature the benefit of the doubt, and looked up a Morse code chart, just in the one in a billion chance that his long and short pecks were a communication technique. I learned this code in Boy Scouts, and also as a pilot but all I remember now is dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot which is SOS or the international distress signal.   Morse code was invented in 1844 by Samuel Morse as a communication technique and was used in aviation and military in the early 20^th century as well as WWII, but was phased out as a communication device in 1999.  The last transmission was the same as the first transmission of Samuel Morse:  What God Hath Wrought.

I suppose you are thinking that perhaps I’ve been smoking weed to even think a pretty, but pesky woodpecker would communicate in Morse Code.  But no, I don’t smoke it, although I do like red wine or a cold beer on various occasions. Anyway, I don’t care anymore because the thought has been in my mind for a while now, and I had to put it to rest.  So, I looked at him and wrote down his long and short pecks, or more specifically, they were short, more delicate taps (dots) with harder taps with emphasis and delay (dashes). So, I wrote them down and translated it using a Morse code chart:

Dash

Dot dot dot dot

Dot

Dash dot dot

Dash dash dash

Dash dash dot

Dot dash dash

Dash dash dash      Dash dash dash

Dash dot dot

Dot Dot

Dot dot dot

Dash dot dot dot

Dot dash dot dot

Dash dash dash      Dash dash dash

Dot dot

Dash dot

Dash Dash dot

I deciphered this to read:  The dogwood is blooming.  

I’ll be damned if he didn’t pause when he was done, looked at me, cocked his head, then repeated the whole thing perfectly again, then, he flew off!

The dogwood is blooming.  While that is a nice thought in the spring I suppose, what does it mean?  And then my heart began to beat like a the flourish of a symphony kettle drum when I realized what just happened.  A not so crazy woodpecker wrote to me using Morse code, and now I think I am a loon.  This can’t be real.   It just can’t be.  Maybe I am way too tired and sleep deprived, and it is just an interesting dream.  I quickly packed up and ran out of the office, jumped in my car and drove home, escaping from this bizarre scene.

And then, just as I entered my garage, it hit me clear as day. It was May 9 and there was only one person I knew in my life who mentioned dogwoods blooming at this time in May, around Mother’s Day.

It just couldn’t be her.  Impossible.  I need a drink.

© SRCarson