Junior Samples, of Hee Haw fame, used to tell a joke about a farmer feeding apples to his pigs. The punchline ended with a rhetorical question: “But what’s time to a hog?”

This might be a less philosophically silly musing than it sounds.

What is time? To any of us?

We talk about time, worry about it, and have various ways and means and systems of measuring it—but when it comes right down to absolute truth, does time truly exist?

I’ll be the first to admit I barely understand the most rudimentary concepts of time in the deeper sense. The more you delve into it, the murkier it gets. Even the definition is impossibly slippery.

That old Clint Eastwood line about how “a man’s gotta know his limitations…” is absolutely true. And time is where I bang into that intellectual reality.

Still, I believe I do manage to grasp a sort of dim glimmering of time’s basics—the framework and boundaries of at least some of its properties—just so long as you don’t expect me to dig very deep into any of the inherent theoretical physics and quantum mechanics that get bandied about when discussing time’s aspects. Once you begin couching time’s various conceptual conflict notions in mathematical formulas, you lose me in the weeds.

Time, however, governs, shapes, defines, and often rules our lives. And it serves many practical, everyday needs, such as when to get up come morning.

I’m one of those quirky folks gifted with a built-in timepiece. I’ve never bothered keeping an alarm clock by my bedside, nor has one ever been part of my essential traveling kit or camping gear.

Should I feel the need to arise at, say, 5:45 a.m., all I have to do is mentally program my internal clock. This means I silently tell myself when I want to get up.

Then, insomnia willing, I go to sleep.

Regardless of how much snoozing I have or haven’t managed, my personal biological alarm will subsequently prod me awake at pretty much the prescribed minute.

I don’t understand how or why this works…it just does. My father had the same knack.

What I do know is it involves subconscious time tracking. I also know our dog Daisy is apparently equipped with a similar biological talent.

In the mornings, Daisy gets up when I do, which is typically around 5:00 a.m. A dog has her duties, and Daisy takes her responsibilities seriously. If I try to sleep in, Daisy reminds me I’ve gotten out of sync.

Daisy goes to bed at the same time every evening. She might be sleeping on the couch, but when bedtime comes, she gets up and adjourns to the bedroom.

She expects her breakfast, lunch, and dinner to be on schedule. If it’s not, and you’re more than five minutes late, she’ll remind you.

How does she keep track of time virtually to the minute? Does she know something I don’t, or grasp time differently, more intuitively?

Is my dog smarter than me?

Nahh, let’s not go there.…

What got me to thinking about this whole business of time was a robin. A boisterous robin full of song, and flat singing his heart out in the pre-dawn netherworld between darkness and daylight.

It was not yet 5:00 a.m. Daisy and I were in the sideyard where I was taking her for her usual early reconnoiter.

She sniffs and pokes about, making sure the fence, cedar bushes, sycamore trees, and woodpile haven’t wandered off since the previous evening. I watch her shadowy progress, as I listen to the rustles of her investigations and the liquid sibilance of the Stillwater River slipping along a few yards away.

Robins aren’t much for preamble, and the one in question purely burst forth with the triumph of morning’s pending arrival—an ebullient heralding as bright and sudden as the flame of a struck match in a stygian cave.

Even Daisy looked up at its commencement.

It was a joyous, effervescent melody. Sprightly and lyrical, swinging round and round, simplistic in phrasing yet more complicated than it first seemed—as befits the bird’s thrush heritage.

I always think of Hoagy Carmichael when I hear a robin sing. Especially a robin singing out into the waning night.

That loud-singing ol’ redbreast knew time was on the move! The sun wouldn’t be up for another half hour, but it was coming—and that was foreknowledge worth celebrating!

Reach Jim McGuire at: [email protected].