Night noises - June 19, 2020

I promised The Husband the evening off from gardening yesterday.  When I came home from work, I peeked at the garden to see if the prior day's fertilization had worked any miracles.  Not yet - nothing had doubled in size overnight - though the squash plant that I'd tipped over with the water hose had righted itself during the day.  There was a little grass coming up in one of the first rows we weeded last week, but I had a headache and did not want to fool with it.  I wanted to take a nap, instead.

I never nap.  A catnap just makes me grouchy, and a longer nap ruins my night.  But yesterday, a nap seemed like a good remedy for the headache.  I came home, puttered around for a few minutes, then stretched out on the couch with a blanket and The Three Musketeers.  I'd no sooner laid down and gotten comfy than the telephone rang.  It rang twice more - robo-calls - in the next hour.  It made me mad; my nap-time was dwindling away!  Finally, I dozed off, and woke up 30 minutes before The Husband was due home from work.

Earlier in the week, I'd picked up a bag of frozen Chinese chicken nuggets with orange sauce.  I popped them in the oven, cooked some rice, and called it dinner.  We had a lot of rice left over, so I stirred up a rice pudding and went out to the back porch to play Solitaire on my laptop while the pudding baked.

By the time the pudding finished baking, it was pitch dark outside.  I went back out to the porch to resume my Solitaire game.  After a few minutes, I heard a strange noise, an animal noise, coming from somewhere close by.  I sat up straight and listened, and heard it again, so I went inside to get the big flashlight.  On the way through the living room, I said to The Husband, "I just heard a reeeeeally strange noise out there."

When I came back with the flashlight, he was on his feet, interested.  He asked, "What did it sound like?"

I thought about it a minute, and said, "A pterodactyl."

He gave me The Look; this time, it said, "I'm pretty sure it's not a pterodactyl."

I said, "Well, you ASKED what it sounds like."

He followed me outside.  I shined the light through the screen, and moved the beam around the yard.  We couldn't see anything, but we heard the noise again.

I handed him the flashlight and said, "Go out there and see what it is."

He evidenced a bit of reluctance, but he took the light and walked out in the yard, and shined it all around, up in the trees and on the ground.  Didn't see anything.

We think it was a hawk.

Sorry I made you read all that.  :-)