In cybernetics, the term valley of the uncanny is used to describe the unease we feel when confronted by current proof-of-concept androids. No matter how meticulously they’re designed, no matter how many separate servo-controlled facial movements they’re capable of, we sense there’s something wrong. Not a doll but also not living: instead, something not-quite-human and, well, disquieting.

That’s the way I feel about late winter, 2017. I live in Greater Washington, DC, and since mid-February something that’s not-quite-spring has been creeping across the winter landscape. And while I’ve taken advantage of the phenomenon by having a beer outside with my sleeves rolled up to better feel the warm breeze, I feel the aforementioned disquiet.

This is not spring, no matter how much it looks like it. To accept its invitation requires me to first cross the valley of the uncanny—which I can’t, no matter how hard I try.

To be clear, we’re not talking here about the simply unseasonable. No, this is full-bore fake spring made a little sinister by the occasional snow shower that dusts the fully blooming ornamental trees in my neighborhood. The massive weeping cherry in my front yard is covered in pink blossoms. The day lilies are already six inches tall, the rose bushes are filling-in with new leaves, the tulip tree next door has flowered, the forsythia in the backyard is golden-yellow and the tulips are well above ground.

Only the dogwoods remain suspicious and resolutely tight-budded—which describes my own reaction to this mutant period. I woke this morning thinking that this must be what it feels like to live in a simulation: the details are all there, but the context is off (a glitch in the Matrix?) and the whole thing feels academic rather than emotional.

Case in point: There are no song birds—like me, they have resisted the temptation to treat this seeming season as the real thing. And, I think, for good reason. Whatever this flowering, grass-growing, shirt-sleeve interlude is, it sure as hell is not spring and, like the Trump Administration, I refuse to normalize it. Sinister Spring deserves its own kind of resistance.