Rural night sounds
Outside, it is quiet, but if you listen closely, long enough for the cold to sink under your skin (the season's first snow is on the ground), the animals are going crazy. I am reminded of Liz Hand's night hammerer. If this were California I would be expecting an earthquake.
In the distance there is some flock of insane Canadian geese intermittently honking away as if experiencing grievous injury. This noise is followed a few seconds later by the crowing of my neighbor's chickens. All this at fifteen minutes to midnight. The chickens then set off the geese again, and this whole little symphony, augmented by the creak of the ventilation turbines on top of the shed next to the cottage, from indoors sounds remarkably like the distressed barking of my neighbor's aging border collie. Like me, she lives alone (and the cottages are a couple hundred meters apart, with trees between), so all this leads me to gear up and go outside equipped with cell phone to make sure everything is all right, and identify the poultry chorale under the bright half moon and the now powdery snow blowing through the trees.
Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving!
In the distance there is some flock of insane Canadian geese intermittently honking away as if experiencing grievous injury. This noise is followed a few seconds later by the crowing of my neighbor's chickens. All this at fifteen minutes to midnight. The chickens then set off the geese again, and this whole little symphony, augmented by the creak of the ventilation turbines on top of the shed next to the cottage, from indoors sounds remarkably like the distressed barking of my neighbor's aging border collie. Like me, she lives alone (and the cottages are a couple hundred meters apart, with trees between), so all this leads me to gear up and go outside equipped with cell phone to make sure everything is all right, and identify the poultry chorale under the bright half moon and the now powdery snow blowing through the trees.
Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving!