me down just two months earlier. Chuckie: 1, Tovar: 0.
Inside the lightweight tent, it seemed like the perfect summer night: a gentle breeze, nothing but mosquito netting between us and the stars.
When the scream came, Cath and I were both awake in an instant. What had we just heard? Yanked out of dream time, we weren’t quite certain. It had been a loud, nasty sound. But what made it and where had it come from? Minutes later, the scream came again—the most frightening animal sound I had ever heard. It wasn’t merely strange, like the wailing bark of a fox. It was angry, a full-throated, snarling yell. And it was close, maybe thirty yards off.
“What is that?” whispered Cath.
“I have no idea.”
We listened. Heard nothing.
“When Dierdre asked us to protect her garden,” Cath whispered again, “I didn’t think it would be this hard!”
“Don’t worry, honey,” I said. “The garden’s safe. Whatever that thing is, it doesn’t eat plants.”
Again the scream, closer still. Now the animal had to be under the trees at the lawn’s edge, about twenty yards off. It occurred to me that I had stood right there a couple hours earlier, taking my before-bedtime pee. Had I offended this creature’s territorial sensibilities? In the faint starlight I thought I caught a flash across the grass fifteen feet away, something the size of a large terrier but fluid in its movement, entirely undoglike. The mosquito netting around us seemed pathetically insubstantial.
We listened and watched, wired on adrenaline. Nothing more.
Finally, Cath said she needed to pee. In the house, of course. We unzipped the tent door and crawled out cautiously. No snarl, no silent pounce.
Once inside the house, we relaxed, solid walls on all sides of us. Cath wasn’t keen on going back out to the tent. I wasn’t keen on staying inside and breathing cat dander.
“Why don’t you sleep in here and I’ll go back out?”
“No way!” she said. “I won’t be able to sleep knowing you’re out there with that thing.”
She decided to go with me, but wanted to bring along something for self-defense. She looked around and came back with a hockey stick belonging to Dierdre’s son.
“Oh no,” I said, laughing. “That’s not coming into the tent with me.”
I had visions of trying to swing a full-length puck slapper in the confines of a space only six feet across. In the end, we compromised. She brought the stick and leaned it against the tent beside the zippered door. I got a heavy steel flashlight from the car and set it beside my sleeping bag, more as a club than as a source of illumination.
All was quiet as we snuggled into our bags.
It was ten or fifteen minutes later, as we both began to drift softly down into sleep, that the heart-stopping scream came again. That was the last we heard of our night visitor. But we lay there a long while, listening, before finally dozing off.
In the morning, we told Dierdre about the night’s events. She had woken at one point, thinking she’d heard a noise. But inside, buffered by the walls of the old farmhouse, the sound was faint and she couldn’t be sure. When Dierdre’s teenage daughter joined the conversation, she mentioned that she had spotted a large bobcat nearby a day or two before.
Yes, I imagined a bobcat could scream like that. And the fluid form I had seen flash across the grass definitely could have been feline.
“Oh, and I spread some dried blood fertilizer around the garden,” said Dierdre. “I was hoping it might scare off the woodchucks.”
Chum , I thought wryly. Bait .
I had never seriously believed that we were in danger of being attacked. My rational mind knew better than that. No wild animal in upstate New York was likely to attack a human, unless it was rabid. Yet my body had been in overdrive, heart racing, limbs tingling. Was this what it had been like to be human for most of the past couple hundred millennia—not only predator, but prey as well?
In
Inside the lightweight tent, it seemed like the perfect summer night: a gentle breeze, nothing but mosquito netting between us and the stars.
When the scream came, Cath and I were both awake in an instant. What had we just heard? Yanked out of dream time, we weren’t quite certain. It had been a loud, nasty sound. But what made it and where had it come from? Minutes later, the scream came again—the most frightening animal sound I had ever heard. It wasn’t merely strange, like the wailing bark of a fox. It was angry, a full-throated, snarling yell. And it was close, maybe thirty yards off.
“What is that?” whispered Cath.
“I have no idea.”
We listened. Heard nothing.
“When Dierdre asked us to protect her garden,” Cath whispered again, “I didn’t think it would be this hard!”
“Don’t worry, honey,” I said. “The garden’s safe. Whatever that thing is, it doesn’t eat plants.”
Again the scream, closer still. Now the animal had to be under the trees at the lawn’s edge, about twenty yards off. It occurred to me that I had stood right there a couple hours earlier, taking my before-bedtime pee. Had I offended this creature’s territorial sensibilities? In the faint starlight I thought I caught a flash across the grass fifteen feet away, something the size of a large terrier but fluid in its movement, entirely undoglike. The mosquito netting around us seemed pathetically insubstantial.
We listened and watched, wired on adrenaline. Nothing more.
Finally, Cath said she needed to pee. In the house, of course. We unzipped the tent door and crawled out cautiously. No snarl, no silent pounce.
Once inside the house, we relaxed, solid walls on all sides of us. Cath wasn’t keen on going back out to the tent. I wasn’t keen on staying inside and breathing cat dander.
“Why don’t you sleep in here and I’ll go back out?”
“No way!” she said. “I won’t be able to sleep knowing you’re out there with that thing.”
She decided to go with me, but wanted to bring along something for self-defense. She looked around and came back with a hockey stick belonging to Dierdre’s son.
“Oh no,” I said, laughing. “That’s not coming into the tent with me.”
I had visions of trying to swing a full-length puck slapper in the confines of a space only six feet across. In the end, we compromised. She brought the stick and leaned it against the tent beside the zippered door. I got a heavy steel flashlight from the car and set it beside my sleeping bag, more as a club than as a source of illumination.
All was quiet as we snuggled into our bags.
It was ten or fifteen minutes later, as we both began to drift softly down into sleep, that the heart-stopping scream came again. That was the last we heard of our night visitor. But we lay there a long while, listening, before finally dozing off.
In the morning, we told Dierdre about the night’s events. She had woken at one point, thinking she’d heard a noise. But inside, buffered by the walls of the old farmhouse, the sound was faint and she couldn’t be sure. When Dierdre’s teenage daughter joined the conversation, she mentioned that she had spotted a large bobcat nearby a day or two before.
Yes, I imagined a bobcat could scream like that. And the fluid form I had seen flash across the grass definitely could have been feline.
“Oh, and I spread some dried blood fertilizer around the garden,” said Dierdre. “I was hoping it might scare off the woodchucks.”
Chum , I thought wryly. Bait .
I had never seriously believed that we were in danger of being attacked. My rational mind knew better than that. No wild animal in upstate New York was likely to attack a human, unless it was rabid. Yet my body had been in overdrive, heart racing, limbs tingling. Was this what it had been like to be human for most of the past couple hundred millennia—not only predator, but prey as well?
In
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