Thursday, April 14, 2011

Noises in the Night

     Living a stone's throw from the wilderness has both benefits and surprises.  For one, we don't listen to traffic or sirens or people noise as we drift off to sleep.
     Instead, the night is alive with a thousand little bull frog voices, an army of crickets, and usually an owl or two.  We've been awakened by coyotes traveling from one side of the canyon to the other - they are extremely vocal about it.  We think that we've heard wolves howling, too, but it's also possibly our neighbor Paula's basset hound.
     The bull elk love to sound off just before day light during the rut.  The Canadian geese find sunrise the optimal time to fly from the creek to the pond, which always involves much fanfare and honking.
     One distant neighbor, Jason, has an old mule that visits the mule herd of another distant neighbor, Dan.  It's always on a Thursday night, and I believe, Grandma's bridge party night.  She leaves the front gate open until she returns.  So the old mule patters by our house, an unmistakable slow and steady 1-2-3-4 beat on the asphalt.  We can phone Jason without having actually seen the old mule.  And yes, Grandma was out playing cards.
     The canyon wall is full of cougars that love a little drama here, too.  A person who has never heard a cougar scream, a mating ritual, is in for a unique opportunity.  It's something between the squealing of car tires and a woman screaming.  It's not a good time to be lying in bed reading a scary story.  The dogs don't leave their dog houses to bark, either.
      One dark and stormy night, in lightning and thunder, and without our power, but with just the screen door between us and the outdoors, a cougar killed a baby deer a short distance from our bedroom.  A little deer will make a high-pitched wail, a bleat like a lamb when in distress.  This poor little thing began bawling and wailing and continued for a solid ten minutes.  We could do nothing.  We found his remains the next morning.
       But, the hands-down, award-winning, raise-the-dead champion noise maker is our own cat Spiffy.  It is his opinion that Bootsie, the outdoor cat, has no business sitting outside the sliding glass door at bedtime as Rudy and I read our books.  Spiffy puffs himself up, begins jumping in the air and banging against the glass, all while yowling at the top of his lungs.  Bootsie just sits and watches him with an amused smirk.
      "Just open the door, kid, just open the door."
      We don't allow this raucous performance to continue long.  Rudy's choice of management is a well-placed pillow thrown at the height of Spiffy's jump in the air.  I prefer several magazines, a book and the Kleenex box.  Sometimes it takes all the objects thrown at rapid succession.  A squirt gun will work, too.
      And all the while, Bootsie sits outside watching, his smile growing wider.  "I can't wait until you throw that cream puff outdoors!"

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