Night predators

For once, I grabbed the camera at the right time, while the pack was howling. I shot out the window, and as it was after midnight it wasn't possible to see anything, but the primal sound is plain.

This is another night sound, a familiar one. I love the weird trills and hyena-laughs of the urban pack, but am relieved to be at a distance. So is Bentley, who was not happy while I was making this video. He was glad when I closed the window.

His fur goes up when he hears them. He can't help it. We don't know if it was a dog or a coyote, or even a pack of coyotes, that attacked him before we adopted him. All we know is that he was bald on top where he had been shaved down. There were healed puncture-wounds on his skin, and it takes a lot to puncture the skin of an animal. He had been pretty badly mangled. Though he is completely healed now, when he leans forward a certain way I can see tiny bald patches all over his shoulders, his badge of survival.  Probably only his mother can see them.

Does he have a bit of kitty PTSD? He's reserved, but not a scaredy-cat. He stands his ground. He doesn't knock you down with affection, but is extremely loyal and attached to both of us, even protective of us. Not every cat is that way.

I hope to get an owl video some night. Or coyotes and owls at the same time. I am getting very involved with neighborhood noises, and sounds in general. I have the hearing of a dog, which I sometimes wish I didn't have. Maybe it's compensation, because I've never been able to see worth a damn.

There's something happening here

This is my attempt to record that deathly sound I was writing about, you know, that doomy night noise that no one believes. It's there, but did not record very well, and I talked too much, perhaps out of nervousness. Bentley appears in this one, as he does in so many of my videos. He is my guide and my familiar.

More and more I notice another kind of sound during the day, whatever the hell it is. Am I imagining this? At first I fervently hoped it was the refrigerator going on and off, since it did seem to stop once in a while. But I checked when it was loudest, and the fridge was off.

It's always on one pitch, very low, very doomy. I hate it. I can't wear a headset or earplugs because they seem to concentrate it. I can't have music on all the time. If I'm totally absorbed in something else, it seems to go away, but it doesn't. If I focus on it, it becomes almost unbelievably loud.

The noise on the video, however, is definitely an aircraft. We've had some weird violence in our neighborhood lately, the kind of things we never used to hear of when we moved here. Recently there was a murder behind the recreation centre. Maybe the cops DO fly over, or the military, or someone else. Bill said he saw a police helicopter circling in the air above our local Walmart, where someone had threatened a clerk in the Customer Service department. For God's sake, people! If you have an item to return, bring your receipt. Don't wear the socks before you bring them back.

That sound MUST be coming from somewhere. It doesn't even seem to be outside. When I'm outside, there's too much ambient noise to pick this up. I swear, every so often it completely stops.

A noise machine?

I just had this weird memory. In Chatham, when I was growing up, the environment was very strange. I see now that we weren't a normal family. We used to get static on the TV all the time, for no reason that was apparent. There was an old lady named Mrs. Clackett, and for some reason my mother used to say, "Mrs. Clackett is running the static machine again."

Does someone around here have a static machine? A doom machine? A what?

Now I remember something else. In Chatham, there was a local whore. She had a lot of children, rumored to be by different men. One of her children was red-haired. A nice lady asked her, "Does his father have red hair?"

"I don't know. He didn't take his hat off."

I don't know what's wrong with me.