Warm Weather is Cold Comfort
by Bill Shein

The madness began four weeks ago, and to be completely honest, I'm not quite sure what it means.

It was a typical Sunday morning at my crooked little house on a hill. Stumbling blearily into the kitchen, I pushed open the back door so Ella, a rambunctious six-year-old Lab mix, could take her morning constitutional in the forest. With curled tail in the air, she bolted down the back stairs and made for a familiar spot in the stone wall at the edge of the property.

"Must be some mice camped out in the wall," I said to Django, the 10-month-old Persian kitten sitting by the window.

"No, I don't think so," he said, putting down the tiny, cat-size guitar he uses to play his namesake's Reinhardtian jazz tunes. "Look," he said, raising a paw to the glass. "She's not at the wall."

Sure enough, Ella was 20 feet shy of the fieldstone barrier, stopped dead in her tracks, tail wagging, head tilted to the side as if confused by an unknown command, a mysterious object, or a talking cat.

She began to whine and bark, occasionally looking over her shoulder to see who might come outside to investigate. And why wouldn't someone go outside to investigate? It was bright and sunny, the temperature in the upper 40s. That's weather we just don't have in January, and certainly not for weeks at a time.

Django leapt onto my shoulder, and we trudged down the muddy hill. Ella was lying down, her nose just inches from something remarkable: Right there, peeking out of the slushy remains of a week-ago snowstorm, its brown skin unmistakable, was a small palm tree.

"Well I'll be damned," I said. It was only 18 inches tall, but definitely a palm tree, complete with tiny coconuts sprouting near the uppermost leaves. What did it mean? Palm trees grow in places like Florida, California and Mexico. But in the Berkshires? Sure, it's been a warm winter, but a palm tree?

As Ella, Django and I sat on the soggy ground contemplating the mystery, Old Man Coltrane — a 16-year-old Shepherd mix — came outside and ambled down the hill, a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his wet, shiny nose.

"Ah, yes," he said, nodding at the palm. "It was only a matter of time. Here, take a look at these."

Under his right foreleg were clippings from The New Yorker magazine — articles about global warming written by Elizabeth Kolbert, a woman whose byline means a story more terrifying than anything imagined by Stephen King.

Not familiar with her work? She writes about skyrocketing carbon emissions, melting ice caps, the no-longer-permanent, methane-filled Siberian permafrost, and whether the atmosphere is likely to catch fire by a week from Thursday.

"Didn't think we'd see palm trees for a few more years," Coltrane said, his wise, graying face showing concern.

Things have become even more bizarre since "palm Sunday." One morning I awoke to dozens of tropical birds perched on top of my garage: pelicans, toucans, gold-and-blue macaws, and even a plush-crested jay from Bolivia (he was selling knock-off sweaters like the one worn by the new Bolivian president, Evo Morales).

Last Tuesday, several banana trees burst to life at the end of my driveway. And suddenly, it seems, there are tropical animals everywhere: jaguars, ocelots and howler monkeys from the Amazon, sitting on that fieldstone wall, flipping through the Shopper's Guide looking for apartment rentals and occasionally asking if they can use my phone.

As I write this, on a 50-degree day in early February, swarms of blue morpho butterflies flutter near the window, their stunning 6-inch wingspan a rare sight outside of South America.

Is the arrival of the Amazonian rainforest in my back yard troublesome? Should we be worried about this unseasonably pleasant weather? Is springtime-in-January just a one-time aberration, or will we all soon be living on Des Moines Island, the rising sea lapping at our ankles?

Sure, some call reporting on global warming "junk science," arguing that there's nothing unusual about warm Berkshire winters or sub-arctic temperatures in Moscow. But when a palm tree suddenly sprouts in the Berkshire Hills, it's hard to argue that it's "normal."

I'm not a climatologist, but I do know that the midnight screeching of those howler monkeys makes it hard to sleep, and those pesky toucans keep knocking over my trash.

And ocelots asking to use my phone? No, my friends, that's not normal at all.

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Bill Shein sells "Berkshire Hills Coconut Milk" at local farmers' markets.

(This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle newspaper on February 5, 2006. Join a discussion about this column in Bill's blog. And read Bill's previous column, "I'm Not Buying a Mac").