One of the most evocative things about living in the country, at least for a guy who was pretty much a city boy up until the end of September 2009, are the animal sounds you hear in the nighttime that you cannot identify.<\/p>\n
I recognize the sounds of the horses, cattle, chickens, and donkeys from the barns and fields. I know a number of bird cries from crows to hawks to whatever it is that seems to call Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy<\/em>. But sometimes I hear things I don’t recognize, and most of the time I hear them at night.<\/p>\n The first night I spent in the house, I reached it after watching the movers load the truck in St. Louis and an afternoon drive down to Springfield. I led my wife to it so she could see it a second time–she’d seen it just once, when we initially looked at it, and I was the one present for all inspections thereafter. So we walked through the empty house together so she could see what we’d wrought, and as I walked her into the near-complete blackness to her truck, I heard something just outside the circle of the porch light.<\/p>\n I’d like to describe it for you, but I find it hard to characterize it. Given the height, it was coming from the trees, so I expect it was a nocturnal bird, perhaps one of those screeching birds. But it might have been a vacationing Jersey Devil for all I know. I didn’t, and that’s what made me uncomfortable.<\/p>\n Then, Saturday morning at 4am, my wife and I were awakened by a high, canine packish sound from outside. Sometimes, the wind whistling around our skylight can make sounds like low children moans or whistle like a maelstrom. The sound didn’t come from the skylight. I looked out a couple windows to try to catch sight of the source, to see if it was a pack of wild dogs or, heaven forfend, actual wolves.<\/p>\n As an aside, when I lived in Jefferson County, we had a pack of wild dogs that roamed the valley in which we lived. They were lost and abandoned pet dogs, so there was a mixture of mutts, none of which topped 80 pounds. It’s hard to be scared of a bunch of feral Yorkies, but one could be in a bit of trouble if a bunch of 80 pound and smaller dogs take you on.<\/p>\n I didn’t see what was wandering outside our house on Saturday morning. I’m uncomfortable in my ignorance. And believe you me, I sweep my eyes from side to side as I drag my garbage cart forty yards down my driveway into the blackness and wonder what lies out there that I don’t know about.<\/p>\n Imagination and ignorance makes life exciting<\/em>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the most evocative things about living in the country, at least for a guy who was pretty much a city boy up until the end of September 2009, are the animal sounds you hear in the nighttime that you cannot identify. I recognize the sounds of the horses, cattle, chickens, and donkeys from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5233"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5237,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5233\/revisions\/5237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}