strangers in the night

at present i'm sitting on the couch - feet up (as though that will save me from moths) with murgy, creeped out, because when she went for her last walk the porch light was on and apparently a million little flies and quite a few moths followed she and garret into the house when they came back inside.

as predicted, i'm a bit afraid of nature.  garret says he can tell how severe the incidence of nature is by my "EEEP!" (small "eeep" is for a small bug on the bathroom floor, big "eeep!" is for something fast and furry like a mouse or chipmunk or GOD FORBID a garden snake within fifty feet of me).  mostly i'm wary of nature finding its way indoors (hence the creepy feeling surrounding the tiny flies).

i'm not terrible, though.  i've been surprisingly low-key about this spider, who until we had company over on friday and swept the entire deck for cobwebs, was living in a web only a few feet from the table where i drink coffee and read/write a lot.  and he's like, the creepiest thing i've ever seen.  ever.  but there's something about him being in his web that puts me at ease, i guess.

a real photo garret and i took of the real spider that was
really living on our deck (for real).

other fun things we've seen are this newt (salamander? i don't know. nature experts, elementary school science teachers, science museum curators? any ideas? i seem to recall from 4th grade science that one can regenerate its tail and the other can't, but the memory is fuzzy aka likely inaccurate and i also didn't attempt any tail regeneration experimentation on this little guy) which we found while out on a walk one day:

and these deer, who were happily eating a neighbor's flowers as we drove by:

we also so some wild turkeys, but they were too fast for us to snap a picture and even if they hadn't been, i was too "OHMYGODCOOLATURKEY!" to think to get the camera.

the thing we haven't quite gotten used to yet is the sound of little creatures making their way through the woods that are our backyard at night.  the air is so dark here at night that i can't even see my hand if it's right in front of my face.  even when the moon is bright.  it's that kind of darkness where if it weren't for the physical sensation, you wouldn't really know whether your eyes were open or closed.  and it's very still, too.  and we're still, because it's so dark.  there's something very soothing about just how dark it is - it's almost like a blanket made of the most safe and nostalgic feeling you could ever find. the lights go out, and quietly you lay, until sleep comes.

or, until...

crack!  crack!  crack!

a sound from the woods (read: tiny twigs breaking) two floors down, and suddenly the adrenaline is in alarm mode.  murgy leaps up, growls a bit.  garret or i whisper to one another (whisper! as though the raccoon in the woods might hear us?) "did you hear that?" and the other will say "yes".  and then we'll lay very, very still - like a kid who was told by his parents to go to sleep hours ago, but has secretly been up reading comics, and now mom and dad are walking down the hall and he desperately doesn't want to get caught.  we wait until it passes, and then the hot goosebumps of fear cool a bit, and then it starts again.  murgy's scared, the humans are scared, and all of what?

things that go bump in the night will never cease to scare people, i guess.  in the light of day i realize how silly it all is - even if it were to be - worst case scenario - a bear, what harm will he do to us, two floors up, inside a locked house?  but there's something about the unknown... about the fact that even on the rare occasions that we (okay, fine, garret) build up the courage to peek out the window, it's too dark to see anything... the mystery of it all is terrifying.

there is an owl who hoots from time to time, though, who i especially like, because i guess i had never heard an owl before him.