Hilton Head Island, S.C-Soft rain is falling, the wind is blowing, and the skies are cloudy. But the temperature is pleasantly mild, and for three days previous to this one, late winter's costal sun has shown brilliantly. I will be leaving here soon, and that thought saddens me.

I will miss my duck. There has never been such a duck. I don't know much about ducks, but this one lives in a lagoon outside my bedroom window and makes a sound like, "Braaaack! Braaaack!"

He works the night shift. His job is keeping the alligators awake. Ditto for any other creature within the sound of his quack.

He begins precisely at sundown. He doesn't hush until dawn. I have nicknamed him "Hosea."

News from the outside world filters in slowly to a place like this. A big story here is that a cosmetic surgeon is moving to the island from Florida to take the wrinkles out for the summer parties at the Sea Pines Club.

That announcement brought an interesting remark in a local paper from a man identified as an "island punster."
"Instead of having your face lifted," he asked, "why not have your body lowered?"

So the Reggie Eaves controversy rages on back in Atlanta, does it? Here, they are more concerned about the bleak outlook for shrimp. No white shrimp have been seen in coastal waters for five weeks. The cost of appetizers goes up and up.

Coal strike? What coal strike? Bless my Lincoln Continental, the cost of a membership to the Sea Pines Club will go up from $3,000 to $5,000 come April 1.
There has been some interest, however, in the story out of Arkansas where the preacher put his deceased 80-year-old mother in a freezer locker and then tried to raise her from the dead. The older retirees here are keeping a close eye on his progress.

I came here to cover the arrival of spring. It comes two weeks earlier to coastal paradise.
I lived without any spring at all for a couple of years. There are only two seasons in Chicago. Winter and the Fourth of July. A year ago today, I was in snow navel-high to a tall Yankee.

Missing springtime is like missing a woman. You never really noticed her and then she was gone, and all that she was returns and makes the separation even more painful.

I think I read this somewhere: "Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn."
People are already on bicycle jaunts around the island here. Sunbathers were on the beach at Turtle Cove over the weekend. Two couldn't wait and hit the surf in mid-70s temperatures.

Squirrels cavort everywhere. I saw a bluebird and a starling. Four deer crossed a road in the Sea Pines Plantation and loped casually through front yards of island residents.

Soon will come another sign of the season. I usually gauge the appearance of spring by the arrival south of the professional golf tournaments. Hilton Head's annual Heritage Classic, a prelude to Augusta National's Masters, is only a week away.

"The boats are already coming in," said a man in Harbor Town Tuesday. "The Heritage and spring brings them south."
"Let it Be" is docked from Ithaca. "Taranak" is here from Plymouth, Maine. "Ravissant" came down from Wilmington, Delaware. I see them and think of the old line about nobody ever retiring north.

The rain has stopped. There is a mist hanging over the marsh behind the Harbor Town Links' 16th green. The wind has ceased, and the stillness that has followed offers an added comfort.

Let them fight it out at City Hall, and where on earth is South Molucca, anyway? Spring is rushing in, and me and my duck wish you were here.

Lewis Grizzard was a syndicated columnist, who took pride in his Southern roots and often wrote about them. This column is part of a collection of his work.

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