Night Sights
During our time out here in the woods we've gotten used to the variety of night sounds. We hear owls. Not just hoot owls, but screech owls, caterwauling barred owls and something we haven't identified yet. We hear a variety of frogs, toads, crickets, katydids, cicadas and all kinds of insects we haven't identified yet. Oh, and don't forget that annoying mosquito that comes whining up to my ear over and over and over. And the ringing in my ear from swatting at it.
Smaller night birds are not as frequent, but we have a few whip-poor-wills and mockingbirds. Barking dogs are common everywhere, but there are many more dogs in our neighborhood and we all depend on them to notify us of intruders--and imagined intruders. There's a donkey at a nearby farm who brays occasionally at night, and a cow or two who low in the dark (low is country talk for moo).
During most of the year we hear coyotes yipping and howling in the distance. Sometimes not too distant. Several times we've heard them as close as a hundred yards. We've been told they only yip and howl when they've found food (read: killed something). We don't have a lot of stray cats out here, anymore, and small dogs left outdoors at night disappear pretty quickly. Even big dogs tend to hang close to the front porch.
We can always tell when deer or coyotes are on the move, by the progression of barking. First the dogs up on Tecumseh start to bark; then the hunting hounds bay three houses closer; the dogs on Tecumseh stop, but the dogs next door to the north start. We can tell if they turn and head west or continue south by the dogs that begin to bark. Sometimes our dogs and the dogs next door to the south start barking and don't stop for a while.
The other night the neighbor dogs were barking and our dogs were just growling. And then the neighbor's dogs just growled.
I saw a late night ad for one of those tactical flashlights last year and just had to have one. I got one for Christmas. It really is a great flashlight. You can focus the beam down to an intense rectangle and identify things in the dark that would be very indistinct and hard to make out with a standard flashlight.
The dogs continued to growl, so I got my flashlight and swept the beam across the south meadow, across the driveway and into the woods. And stopped.
We're used to all the night sounds and many of the sights: the Milky Way, the moon, the planets, even an occasional bat flying really close.
Eyes staring back in the dark from a hundred feet away are not something we are used to. Glowing eyes in the darkness. They just stared. "Maybe it's just an old bottle or a plastic bag caught in a tree reflecting the light." The eyes kept staring. Then they did something really creepy. They turned, trotted twenty feet north and then stopped, turned and stared at us again. We went in the house and closed the door.
Ah, the peaceful country life !
Stephen P.
Smaller night birds are not as frequent, but we have a few whip-poor-wills and mockingbirds. Barking dogs are common everywhere, but there are many more dogs in our neighborhood and we all depend on them to notify us of intruders--and imagined intruders. There's a donkey at a nearby farm who brays occasionally at night, and a cow or two who low in the dark (low is country talk for moo).
During most of the year we hear coyotes yipping and howling in the distance. Sometimes not too distant. Several times we've heard them as close as a hundred yards. We've been told they only yip and howl when they've found food (read: killed something). We don't have a lot of stray cats out here, anymore, and small dogs left outdoors at night disappear pretty quickly. Even big dogs tend to hang close to the front porch.
We can always tell when deer or coyotes are on the move, by the progression of barking. First the dogs up on Tecumseh start to bark; then the hunting hounds bay three houses closer; the dogs on Tecumseh stop, but the dogs next door to the north start. We can tell if they turn and head west or continue south by the dogs that begin to bark. Sometimes our dogs and the dogs next door to the south start barking and don't stop for a while.
The other night the neighbor dogs were barking and our dogs were just growling. And then the neighbor's dogs just growled.
I saw a late night ad for one of those tactical flashlights last year and just had to have one. I got one for Christmas. It really is a great flashlight. You can focus the beam down to an intense rectangle and identify things in the dark that would be very indistinct and hard to make out with a standard flashlight.
The dogs continued to growl, so I got my flashlight and swept the beam across the south meadow, across the driveway and into the woods. And stopped.
We're used to all the night sounds and many of the sights: the Milky Way, the moon, the planets, even an occasional bat flying really close.
Eyes staring back in the dark from a hundred feet away are not something we are used to. Glowing eyes in the darkness. They just stared. "Maybe it's just an old bottle or a plastic bag caught in a tree reflecting the light." The eyes kept staring. Then they did something really creepy. They turned, trotted twenty feet north and then stopped, turned and stared at us again. We went in the house and closed the door.
Ah, the peaceful country life !
Stephen P.
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