Hello everyone!  I hope that you are all having a wonderful week so far.  We had a beautiful sunny day on Monday.  More about that another time however.  This has been a very wet autumn.  And I don’t mean official autumn, but our northern autumn, which we have had for 5 weeks now.  Of course our autumn doesn’t normally begin so early.  But it did this year.  At least for temperatures.

There has been a little, noisy, visitor for the last few nights.  A raccoon.  I call him Rocky.  He is a younger one and likely weighs no more than Muffin.  But Rocky looks bigger with all that fur.  I think he likes Muffin.  I have some plastic milk crates sitting in front of the window.  Rocky climbs on them to look in the window at Muffin.  She was scared at first.  No more.  At 4:30 this morning, Rocky shows up.  Muffin was at the window.  She attacked Rocky, scratching at the window, hissing, spitting.  Scared Rocky.  He fell off the crates.  Muffin was so happy and proud!  Poor Rocky.

I used to participate in a lot of different bird studies at one time.  One such study was trying to determine the breeding range of different species of owls.  That meant being out at night looking for owls.  That was no easy task.  It’s dark.  You may remember my encounter with the police doing this.  This time I stayed off the main highways and traveled down this lonely country road.  Hardly anyone lives along this road, I think there was 3 houses.  It was a long winding road. 

I would stop now and then, get out and call for owls.  I got very good at imitating their calls and they would come flying in nice and close so I could see them.  I always chose a night with good moonlight such as that particular night.  After a bit I noticed a car coming up behind me, but it stayed back quite a bit.  It traveled at the same speed as me and stopped when I stopped.  After the third time I was getting a bit nervous.  I had already passed the last house.  And it was a good distance before arriving at another road.  Hmm, what to do?

I was stopped and had just called for owls when 2 of them came flying in.  Nice.  2 Great Gray owls.  They are large owls and not easy to call in close.  I was so excited about this as they are considered a rare owl, so I was very intently watching them.  The car behind me had stopped as usual.  But this time it started driving slowly up behind me.  I was in front of my car, about 20 feet.  It was so amazingly quiet on that lonely road.  Yet I didn’t even hear this car driving closer until it stopped behind my car.  Great. No one got out of the car.  That just made me more nervous.  I started back to my car.

Just as I got back to the car it happened.  Bright light and loud voice saying don’t move. My heart was pounding but at the same time I knew who it was.  The police.  Two officers got out and came over to question me.  There was no problem once I showed my ID.  Apparently there had been 2 break ins at one of the houses in the past month.  They laughed when I told them what I was doing.  It was 1 am, I went back home.  Enough excitement for one night.

Night visitors can be so exciting.  Or not.  I hope you all have a wonderful day and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

© 2019 Steve McLeod.