NightSong

Weird dreams are again plaguing me, no doubt the product of the end of school.  As if that weren't enough, I was awakened out of whatever sleep I was managing to get last night by the canine chorus around 1:30.  Chewie was going nuts, those deep throat barks that always make me think somebody is standing in the middle of the kitchen with a knife ready to do me harm.  It's more likely an armadillo is standing petrified just outside the window praying the giant noisy thing cannot get to it, but when I'm jarred out of sound sleep, what logical thinking manages to engage doesn't jump to the harmless little shelled mammal quivering in the yard.  It always jumps to the potential serial killer plotting maniacally near the fridge.

Once they woke me up, Chewie and Roux continued to rage for a good twenty minutes.  Maybe there was an armadillo hoedown going on outside.  I don't know.  I didn't go outside to see.  There are far more dangerous things than armadillos around here.  This is about the time of the year that the mysterious howling cat likes to show up, and I don't mean the type that one leaves out a saucer of milk for.  My neighbors say it's a bobcat.  We have larger things in the woods, too, panthers.  That might have been what the dogs heard, their sensitive ears catching the noise mine could not.  It might also have been deer or coyote which range through here on a regular basis.  I wouldn't necessarily have heard either of those things, but the dogs might have.

Or it could have been a stick dropping on the roof.

In any case, there's nothing like lying in the dark with dogs going berserk waiting to see if there is going to be another sound to go with it, one you're going to have to do something radical about.  Not fun.  Also not conducive to rest.  It's one of the downsides of living alone.  At least if there were somebody else in the house, I could sort of have that "Scooby-Doo" moment where we go see what's wrong together.  One has to make do with what one has, though.  At present that's just me, assorted cats who look indignant at being disturbed by my daring to move them in the middle of the night (something my sleep-addled brain should have taken as a sign of no-real-danger), and loud, protective doggage.

There was the one time, of course, when the thing that woke me was a stealthy knock on my door (not that I went to it that late/early) and the sound of someone trying to open the locked screen door very gently.  I suppose that time is the time that keeps me waking up startled in the darkness.  It was a very long time ago, and before I had any dogs at all.  All in all, I'd have to say that it's much better to wake up to Chewie, Roux, and the sound of potential canine violence than that eerie click of a door handle that isn't yielding.