Don’t even try talking to me before I’ve sucked down a couple of cups of coffee. Coffee must be sucked down while I’m out on the front porch, with a cheap cigar.
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Last night at dusk I stood out on my front porch and watched the geese return to the river by the hundreds. The bulk of them flew directly over my house at tree top level. The noise coming off the river two blocks away was unreal and deafening. So far this morning they have yet to leave, but they’re quieter. The noise is slowly building and it shouldn’t be long before they’re all heading inland, somewhere. If they come back at dusk today, I have to go record the sound. It’s too hard to describe.
I get 4-5 hours of relatively solid sleep a night, after that it’s a crap shoot on whether I’ll fall asleep again. Last night I passed out early, which found me wide awake at 1 A.M. An hour later the Tiki Dog starts barking. She has three distinct barks. One is the “I have to go out and shit and piss” bark, the second is the “I’m just fucking with the cats” bark and the third is the “I’m pissed off at something” bark that includes a few low level growls thrown in for good measure.
This was option three. The wife rolls over, tells her to shut up and promptly begins snoring again. I don’t know how the hell she does that.
I considered getting out of bed to see what was going on, but around here it’s usually a raccoon or possum that’s decided to come rummage around under the front window. Or a coyote wandering down the street, no big deal.
Out on the porch this morning with coffee and a cigar, I see the footprints across my front lawn. Human prints, big feet with a long stride, so someone definitely bigger than me.
I followed them around the neighborhood. They were coming from the direction of the ravine. Across my neighbors lawn and they walked up to the backyard gate of the next neighbor. Across the end of the dead end street and down the drive way of the house I used to rent on the edge of the ravine. Across and around the house next door. When I get to that neighbors yard, the neighbor is out getting ready to go to work. I tell him what I’m doing and we follow the tracks to where they disappear near a trail that comes up out of the ravine.
We shrug it off. “Not a very smart human being” says the neighbor, “I have no qualms about shooting stupid people that think they need to come in my house.”
I find it odd how that attitude came about for me. Not sure it’s even a conscious decision. I hunt, I’m an aberration in the family. Shoot a deer, shoot a duck, a goose, a pheasant, a squirrel, an intruder that tries to walk into your house uninvited. It’s all the same on a certain level.
Not good or bad or something I worry about or think about much, it is what it is.
