I just returned from a trip down the hall to the coffee pot, where I paused for a minute to listen to a conversation at one of the cubicles I pass.
Apparently, Carolyn has a rabbit problem at her house over in Southwest Denver, not something uncommon around these parts. Everywhere you look you can see the scruffy western jackrabbits, and of course, rabbits, being rabbits, tend to reproduce rather rapidly.
Also quite common in the Denver metro area are coyotes and red fox. Carolyn said she was awakened last night by the sound of rabbits screaming as the coyotes turned her backyard into an all-night-all-you-can-eat rabbit smorgasbord.
She said at first she couldn’t figure out what the noise was, and was frightened, and I immediately spoke up and said something about how it reminded me of being 7-years old, laying in bed shivering, afraid to move or call out because the monster under the bed would get me. We all broke out giggling.
Truthfully though, I’m usually asleep in mere seconds after my head hits the pillow, and I’ve been known to sleep through thunderstorms with hail, which is no small feat considering we have a skylight over the bed.
John asked me the other night if I had heard the neighbors kids screaming on the trampoline until 9pm, well after my bedtime. I heard nothing.
What does cause me to wake is if it gets quiet. I must have a fan running just for white noise. If the power goes out, I awaken because it is too quiet. I have trouble sleeping with earplugs because it is too quiet. Yet, the sound of someone snoring will also wake me up, I suppose because it is irregular and of a different quality than the background white noise that I like.
On the rare occasion when I have been camping up in the mountains, it was in a tent, and although at night it is pitch black, and the stars overhead are simply amazing, it is far from quiet. The wind rustles the trees, and there is all sorts of wildlife making noises that echo through the woods, making it hard to tell if it is something just outside the reach of your flashlight or campfire, or something a mile away.
The condo I had before moving into our present house was 2 miles east of I-225, but on a balmy night, if I left the sliding-door open to the balcony, I could hear the traffic. We are far enough away from any expressway now that I don’t hear traffic, and come to think of it, I don’t even hear the occasional train whistle from far, far away as I used to from the condo.
I suppose it is some vestige of our ancient DNA that causes us to be more aware of sounds at night. Our ancient cavemen ancestors probably needed to be very aware of anything approaching, and those who were oblivious to the sounds in the night likely didn’t spread their DNA too far down the line.
We don’t all have coyotes or foxes snacking on rabbits in our yards at night, but most of us would probably sit up straight in bed should we hear a rabbit scream in the lonely hours just before 2am, and wonder at least for a moment, what was going on.