Night Noises

Bump, bump... rattle, rattle...

The cats and I are alone tonight, the Engineer's in Canada. I know it's the wind, but I don't know what it's playing with on the roof.

I'm not going outside to find out.

My ears are better than most folks'. I hear things. Mostly things that really are there, but sometimes I let my imagination run away with me.

In North Carolina, one morning at the crack of dawn, I heard something scrabbling at my bedroom window, trying to get in. I got my baseball bat and pulled the shade up with a snap. Found myself eye to eye with a hawk. We stared at each other, mouths open, for a fraction of a second before he shoved off and flew away. I think he was trying to make love with his reflection in the glass.

The baseball bat is my chosen protector when I hear night noises. I figure if it's burglars, I'll take out their kneecaps, then they won't be able to chase me as I flee. I've made more than one baseball bat patrol since being married to the Engineer. Once he's asleep it would take an explosion in a beer factory to wake him -- and only if the flying beer hit him right in the face.

When we were first married and living in Houston, there was a terrible storm one night. Pounding rain, lightning, thunder, the wind shook the whole house. I was sure a tornado was bearing down on us. I grabbed the Engineer's arm and tried to drag him out of bed into the central hall where we would be safer. I couldn't wake him. I couldn't budge him. I resigned myself to an early death for both of us.

We survived.

Next morning when he woke up, he asked me what the heck had happened that branches were down all over the yard.

Yup, my trusty baseball bat is my first line of defense against night noises.