It's just not spring yet if the ducks aren't on the swimming pool cover

I knew it was spring three weeks ago. The freezing rain didn't tell me. Emilia and Sam did. They're ducks that magically appear every spring and take up residence on the winter cover of our above-ground pool. The semi-melted snow on the cover provides a half-lake, half-skating rink for the two webbed-foot freeloaders.

I call them freeloaders because my wife doesn't like them. They're not a sign of spring. They're just two disgusting birds that make a mess on every winter cover we've ever had. Emilia and Sam also use the pool as their toilet. My wife opens our pool every year, and every year the ducks leave their personal "calling cards." It's not pretty. The combination of duck poop, wet leaves, dead bugs, and scummy water make an odd abstract. The mixture of colors looks like something Walt Disney threw up.

They're called Emilia and Sam because when I was little, we had an Emilia and Sam who would show up without invitation when the weather got warm. Our Emilia and Sam weren't ducks; they were two elderly third or fifth cousins on my grandfather's mother's side of the family. Or maybe they were on my grandmother's father's side. I don't remember. What I do remember was that they'd show up every Sunday just in time for our big Italian Sunday meal.

Sam would enter first, wearing his Sunday best suit, proclaiming, "We were just in the neighborhood, thought we'd stop by." In the neighborhood, my eye! They lived 13 miles away. They needed to take a dirt road, two alleys, 12 streets, and three highways just to get to our neighborhood.

The scent of grandma's Italian sausage traveling through our open windows was like nectar for these two ne'er-do-wells from Naples.

They were nice enough and after my grandfather's weekly tirade of Italian curses when they rang our doorbell, the afternoon was always pleasant. They'd play cards for hours, then Sam and grandpa would go into the living room, talk Italian for a while and both fall asleep in mid-conversation. Sam snored with an Italian accent.

Sometimes Sam and grandpa sang. They'd have a little too much chianti with dinner and grandpa would get out his guitar. My grandfather was deaf in one ear and couldn't hear very well with his other. Sam sang in the key of H. They often sang two different songs. But neither could tell because grandpa used the Rocky Marciano method of guitar playing. It sounded like he was playing the guitar with boxing gloves on. Our neighbor's beagle would howl when she heard them singing. Of the three, the dog had the best voice.

But I liked Sam. He'd slip me a dollar and call me "Davey Boy." Emilia was ... weird. Her eyebrows were drawn on and her thick white makeup made her look like Cesar Romero, the Joker on "Batman." Like Romero, Emilia's makeup couldn't hide her moustache either. She always wore flower-patterned dresses and her orchid-scented perform arrived 15 minutes before she did. She never went outside during the summer because bees would try pollinating with her.

One Sunday we turned the tables and drove to their house. We pulled up as they were just about to leave for our house. My grandfather shouted, "We were just in the neighborhood!" Emilia looked shocked, or maybe she just drew her eyebrows a little higher that day. I remember they had two plastic lawn ducks in their backyard, and that's why I call our duck visitors each spring Emilia and Sam.

Reach Dave Sinker, a longtime Naperville resident and owner of the Comedy Shrine in downtown Naperville, at davidsinker@yahoo.com.