On my evening walk last month, I saw the season's first flock of geese flying south for the winter. They drew my attention with their hoarse cries, ever vocal, never a pause in the conversation. I wonder if geese have their own version of "99 Bottles of Beer On The Wall" to pass the time during their long journeys. Maybe some of them are just adolescents making their first migration, constantly badgering (or would it be "goosing"?) their parents -- "are we there yet?" Maybe they're just fondly extolling warmer climes, the way soldiers and salesmen, with their unfocused gaze fixed on a distant hazy horizon, anticipate relaxing someplace with cold beer and plentiful women, or just going home.

The sun was so low it glanced off their pale bellies. Silhouetted against the sky, they flew low, under 100 feet. They looked huge. It seemed like I could almost reach up and touch them, put my finger on the apex of the V and divert them according to my whimsy. I've been manipulating too many touch-screens lately, and increasingly real life conjures associations with video games. Sad.

The odd thing is that on this evening, along with the first signs of birds fleeing winter's approach, I could still thrill to sparkles in the approaching night, scores of fireflies winking at each other (and only incidentally, I assure you, at me) in a last desperate effort to find true love and generate progeny, not necessarily in that order.

It's either very late in the season for lightning bugs to hold out, or early in the season for birds to bug out. If it's late for fireflies, I'm glad to see it happen. Worldwide, firefly populations seem to be decreasing. Contributors include loss of habitat, industrial and agricultural pollution, and oddly enough, the proliferation of electric lights visible in the night. These artificial optic love-songs seem to confuse the lightning bugs. A car drives by with its headlights set on dazzling. The males think, "Woah, dude's on steroids! I'm outa here!" The females think "Oh my. Oh, my! Hey there big fella. How's about some sugar!" (Splat!) (Unlike female humans, female fireflies are impulsive and rarely think things through.)

A dragonfly, and then another, silently swoop around, vaguely curious. First comes a skinny one, then a fat one. I think of Laurel and Hardy, or Abbott and Costello, or Rice and Cheney. As they flit back and forth, zany, seemingly keeping time to the kazoo music in my head, I half expect to see them collide, knock off each other's hats, pick up the hats, dust them off with conspicuous dignity, then collide again.

A very big black dog trots out from his yard and up his driveway, come to check me out. This doesn't please me, but apparently I don't displease him. He is content to trot around me in a circle, then resume his yard patrol.

Somebody has mown the tall grass between the frontage road and Old Highway 40. Pale crew-cut strips alternate with tire tracks and darker windrows of cut grass, arcing and curving like a series of ripples or fish scales that spread out and down the right of way. Trees along the road throw elongated shadows in the late evening light, grey spires intersecting the curving mower cuts, creating a striated complex of light and darkness, a natural Moire pattern. I stare at it too long; it makes me dizzy.

I walk as softly as I can in the crunching gravel. When all the distant engine sounds pause, my steps are barely audible; I can hear the things that are here all the time, which we usually don't bother to hear at all.

Layers of sound envelop me -- oscillating buzzing, pulsing keening, both superimposed on an incessant, high-pitched hum, punctuated by occasional chirps, piercing in their clarity. Kansas nurtures little toads and frogs whose calls can easily be mistaken for crickets or katydids -- the songs of little amphibians complement those of little insects. It's been a relatively damp year, and I've seen numerous toads, even the occasional frog, in my garden. I accidentally dug up a few hibernating toads this spring. Fortunately, I didn't injure any of them. Summarily disinterred and lying on his back, a fat-flat groggy toad will begin to play a totally toadly air-guitar, feebly stroking the invisible instrument with his webbed feet.

Now walking the back road, I see a horde of birds scattered across the mown area between the road and a wheat field. As I approach, I see they're robins, all robins. It's a huge swarm of robins! (I hope they're not mean robins, like the ravens in that Hitchcock movie.) They bounce and peck through the stubble, searching for indiscrete insects. Closer still, I can clearly see their black heads and tails, their orange breast feathers. My approach makes them nervous. They stay ahead of me until the shoulder narrows; then they move to a nearby back yard to continue their questing.

A rabbit sits erect on his haunches in the gathering gloom, looks at me quizzically, front paws dangling. I twitch my mustache, he twitches his. From high in the darkness overhead comes a plaintive cry, "When are we gonna beee there?"

Jon Hauxwell, MD, is a retired family physician who grew up in Stockton and now lives outside Hays.

hauxwell@ruraltel.net