Generally speaking there aren't that many things that frighten me. Well, other than the things that frighten any rational person - war, debilitating illness, the suffering of those I love, the expectation of pain, those sorts of things. But last night I found myself scared to step outside the patio doors...
It was really very silly, and I told myself so at the time, but I could feel the hair standing up on the back of my neck and down my arms. And all because of a noise.
Mind you, it was a most unpleasant noise, loud enough for me to hear from inside with the doors closed. A sort of wheezing, choked whimpering, followed by loud panting - the sort of heavy breathing obscene phone-callers make (and yes, I have heard that. You'd be surprised the sort of perverts that used to call BT customer services. Although actually, no, you probably wouldn't. Anyway...)
Now, we're talking about my garden, and I
know there's nothing out there that can hurt me. Well, OK, there are insects whose bites produce an allergic reaction, and a handful of poisonous plants, and things with thorns, but nothing that can really do any harm. But it was dark, and waving a torch around didn't reveal anything, and I couldn't tell quite where it was coming from. It sounded like the rockery - but after clearing away the love-in-a-mist most of the space is now visible, except around the lavender bush and under the bay tree, and nothing was moving.
And shame upon me, I was too scared to take a couple of steps walk up the garden to see what was making the noise.
In the light of day and given the lack of any bodies I have to assume it was a hedgehog - or, more likely, two hedgehogs making lots of baby hedgehogs: I checked this morning and August is their second, less-defined mating season - but the combination of late-night darkness, loud unfamiliar sounds and not being able to see what was happening was chilling.
But the daftest thing was that I dreamed it was a
wombat. Seriously. My last dream before waking - being woken, I mean - was that I'd told K&K about it and we all went into the garden to check, only to find a wombat charging around snortling. [shakes head] I'm sure wombats amble rather than charge. And wombats don't look like hedgehogs anyway...
Odd, very odd.
Better get ready to take Kai to the Showcase. More later.
Labels: garden, scary things
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Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 2:01 pm
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