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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2921N5n:
So the monster growl-barking thing that was prowling around the ger in the night for most of the time I was at the farm?
We dubbed it “the chupacabras” because of course. (Chupacabras are actually a family inside joke due largely to our mother having been a high school Spanish teacher. But it’s a family inside joke that hadn’t been referred to in like, two decades, so bonus points on middle-little sister for resurrecting it.)
Evidence leans mostly toward it being a red fox. We’re not sure at all though. Brother-in-law heard it and ran outside, the night it barked for an hour solid– it went far enough toward the house that it woke him– but he didn’t see it, and it came and wandered around in the creek bed next to us for a while, by the echoes. Annoying as hell, is the thing.
So the last night we were there, we had a big bonfire and drank probably way too much. So whatever this thing was, surely it couldn’t fail to notice the twenty-foot-high flames and so on, and a dozen people hooting and yelling as humans do, way up in the middle of the forest. (There’s a band of forest, and on the other side is a cleared area, a few fields and in the middle a sort of elephant graveyard of old farm equipment that my peeps have been rehabilitating– hence the random bulldozer, last used in the 80s, that’s worth like $8k and needed $200 worth of repairs to work perfectly, so now b-i-l has a bulldozer and has bulldozed everything he can think of. Anyway. That’s where the bonfire was.)
We settled upon a plan. FOR SURE, this time, if that damn animal came growling around, we were going to go out and yell at it, and get a look at it, and find out what it was. So we got a big flashlight, and we got a baseball bat, and we got a lot of beer inside us and we talked big about how we were going to SOLVE THE MYSTERY and also SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF THAT THING because it was super annoying and did not need to growl at us, it was uncalled-for and also was probably scaring the baby chickens.
So, I stumbled drunkenly into bed around midnight with Dude, and we figured the chupacabras wouldn’t come around until closer to dawn. Its nightly barkstravaganzas had mostly been between 2-4am, so. Anyway. We uh. Didn’t go right to sleep, and did the sorts of things that two not-yet-all-that-old people might do slightly tipsily, and be glad nobody’s right nearby because air mattresses make a hell of a racket even if you don’t thrash around all *that* much.
And right in the middle of that, the damn thing started barking. I was like, are we going to go yell at it? and dude kind of came up for air and was like, I don’t know about you but I’m pretty busy, and I was like, no, I’m enjoying this, we’ll chase the chupacabras later.
Anyway. By the time we were done, the chupacabras had shut its yap, and so we fell asleep.
Two hours or so later, I wake up and something’s on the ger platform. It’s a twelve-foot ger, and a sixteen-foot platform, so there’s a little ledge around the edge. (We were joking about installing a colonnade there.) Something’s got four feet and is puttering around this platform, just the other side of the canvas-and-lath walls. So I’m like, what the fuck, and dude’s like, I’ll get the bat, and I’m like, there’s no room to swing, it’s right goddamn there, and also, it’s not growling, it’s probably not the chupacabras, whatever it is.
And then the thing fucking leaps straight up, right over the five-foot sidewall, and lands on the roof, and there’s a half a moon and I can see the shadow of it, and it’s a quadruped and maybe like a possum or raccoon-sized thing, can possums jump, wait I don’t know if raccoons can jump either, what is this thing, it walks right up the roof, I lose my shit, Dude is like what do we do, and then it sits down right on the covering over the tono (yurt hole).
Which is made of canvas. And has no supports under it, presently.
And the covering starts to sag. And Dude’s like ahh it’s coming in and I’m like you’re the one who can reach the flashlight so fucking reach it already and he’s like the baseball bat’s all the way over there and I’m like turn on the fucking flashlight what is your problem Jesus Christ. (We’re great in crises together, it’s where our chemistry really shines.)
The Creature notices that the thing it’s sitting on is falling into a hole, so it walks back down one of the roof rafters. The angle of the shadow is different, and this time I can see it much more clearly.
It is a cat. It is one hundred percent one of my sister’s cats. I can see the ears. I can see the tail. I’m like dude. Dude.
That’s a cat.
So we sit there and look at it for a second, and then I reach up and poke the shadow of one of its paws and yell “GET OFF THERE YOU JERK”.
The cat leaps straight up into the air, and we think, possibly goes into orbit.
No more visitors come around that night, nobody barks, but I don’t sleep all that well.
The next day we packed up and left. We saw and chatted with two of the farm cats, but the third one didn’t show up until late afternoon. It probably took Whiskey that long to orbit the earth and come back down. I just hope this discourages her from making cat-hammocks between all the ger’s rafters.
(I buttoned up the ger pretty good when I left, including putting an umbrella through the tono with the flap anchored down on top of it, so if she does go sit up there it won’t fall in. I also hung the other umbrella from the first umbrella’s handle, open, and set the baseball bat inside it, so hopefully that’s enough ballast.)
So the monster growl-barking thing that was prowling around the ger in the night for most of the time I was at the farm?
We dubbed it “the chupacabras” because of course. (Chupacabras are actually a family inside joke due largely to our mother having been a high school Spanish teacher. But it’s a family inside joke that hadn’t been referred to in like, two decades, so bonus points on middle-little sister for resurrecting it.)
Evidence leans mostly toward it being a red fox. We’re not sure at all though. Brother-in-law heard it and ran outside, the night it barked for an hour solid– it went far enough toward the house that it woke him– but he didn’t see it, and it came and wandered around in the creek bed next to us for a while, by the echoes. Annoying as hell, is the thing.
So the last night we were there, we had a big bonfire and drank probably way too much. So whatever this thing was, surely it couldn’t fail to notice the twenty-foot-high flames and so on, and a dozen people hooting and yelling as humans do, way up in the middle of the forest. (There’s a band of forest, and on the other side is a cleared area, a few fields and in the middle a sort of elephant graveyard of old farm equipment that my peeps have been rehabilitating– hence the random bulldozer, last used in the 80s, that’s worth like $8k and needed $200 worth of repairs to work perfectly, so now b-i-l has a bulldozer and has bulldozed everything he can think of. Anyway. That’s where the bonfire was.)
We settled upon a plan. FOR SURE, this time, if that damn animal came growling around, we were going to go out and yell at it, and get a look at it, and find out what it was. So we got a big flashlight, and we got a baseball bat, and we got a lot of beer inside us and we talked big about how we were going to SOLVE THE MYSTERY and also SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF THAT THING because it was super annoying and did not need to growl at us, it was uncalled-for and also was probably scaring the baby chickens.
So, I stumbled drunkenly into bed around midnight with Dude, and we figured the chupacabras wouldn’t come around until closer to dawn. Its nightly barkstravaganzas had mostly been between 2-4am, so. Anyway. We uh. Didn’t go right to sleep, and did the sorts of things that two not-yet-all-that-old people might do slightly tipsily, and be glad nobody’s right nearby because air mattresses make a hell of a racket even if you don’t thrash around all *that* much.
And right in the middle of that, the damn thing started barking. I was like, are we going to go yell at it? and dude kind of came up for air and was like, I don’t know about you but I’m pretty busy, and I was like, no, I’m enjoying this, we’ll chase the chupacabras later.
Anyway. By the time we were done, the chupacabras had shut its yap, and so we fell asleep.
Two hours or so later, I wake up and something’s on the ger platform. It’s a twelve-foot ger, and a sixteen-foot platform, so there’s a little ledge around the edge. (We were joking about installing a colonnade there.) Something’s got four feet and is puttering around this platform, just the other side of the canvas-and-lath walls. So I’m like, what the fuck, and dude’s like, I’ll get the bat, and I’m like, there’s no room to swing, it’s right goddamn there, and also, it’s not growling, it’s probably not the chupacabras, whatever it is.
And then the thing fucking leaps straight up, right over the five-foot sidewall, and lands on the roof, and there’s a half a moon and I can see the shadow of it, and it’s a quadruped and maybe like a possum or raccoon-sized thing, can possums jump, wait I don’t know if raccoons can jump either, what is this thing, it walks right up the roof, I lose my shit, Dude is like what do we do, and then it sits down right on the covering over the tono (yurt hole).
Which is made of canvas. And has no supports under it, presently.
And the covering starts to sag. And Dude’s like ahh it’s coming in and I’m like you’re the one who can reach the flashlight so fucking reach it already and he’s like the baseball bat’s all the way over there and I’m like turn on the fucking flashlight what is your problem Jesus Christ. (We’re great in crises together, it’s where our chemistry really shines.)
The Creature notices that the thing it’s sitting on is falling into a hole, so it walks back down one of the roof rafters. The angle of the shadow is different, and this time I can see it much more clearly.
It is a cat. It is one hundred percent one of my sister’s cats. I can see the ears. I can see the tail. I’m like dude. Dude.
That’s a cat.
So we sit there and look at it for a second, and then I reach up and poke the shadow of one of its paws and yell “GET OFF THERE YOU JERK”.
The cat leaps straight up into the air, and we think, possibly goes into orbit.
No more visitors come around that night, nobody barks, but I don’t sleep all that well.
The next day we packed up and left. We saw and chatted with two of the farm cats, but the third one didn’t show up until late afternoon. It probably took Whiskey that long to orbit the earth and come back down. I just hope this discourages her from making cat-hammocks between all the ger’s rafters.
(I buttoned up the ger pretty good when I left, including putting an umbrella through the tono with the flap anchored down on top of it, so if she does go sit up there it won’t fall in. I also hung the other umbrella from the first umbrella’s handle, open, and set the baseball bat inside it, so hopefully that’s enough ballast.)
