Night Shift

 

I've always hesitated to say that having a puppy is like having a baby, because I know parenthood is a much greater challenge. But there are similarities. The watching their every step, the teaching, the disciplining. "What's in your mouth? Don't eat that!" applies to both species. Worry over electrical cords, and ponds, and household cleaners. Apologizing to strangers in public: "I'm sorry, he's friendly! He's just excited." The way "no" stops feeling like an actual word because you've said it so much. 

In many ways, Strider is shaping up to be a good barn dog. He loves the horses, and they at least seem to tolerate him. My last dog, Viktor, was not only hyper-aggressive, but angry. I've never met such an angry puppy. He was terrible with children. Strider is cheerful, and bouncy, and loves life...but I can't get him to sleep through the night. He started teething at the start of October, and, like a human baby, was feverish, cranky, and had an upset stomach. He was up three, four, five, sometimes six times a night. Cue me standing in the yard, robe and jacket over it, with a flashlight, searching for coyote eyeshine while he did his thing. His teething is better, and he is sleeping a little better - at least two or three nights a week all the way through - but there's no consistency. He's been to the vet, and there's nothing medically wrong with him. I've tried with and without canine probiotics, tried keeping him away from certain treats (horse manure, let's be real), but so far, the only common denominator I can find is the weather. If it's freezing, and windy; if there's a storm front moving in, he can't sleep. Cry-cry-cry, scratch on the crate door, and then it's outside. At one, two, three, four. Every hour, some nights, until he crashes as the sun comes up, and then it's extra coffee for me throughout the day. He's an anxious bird - gee, wonder where he picked that up? - and I'd like to think this is all just a stage he's going through, that as he matures, and comes into his own - the big boy bark is in full effect, these days - he'll be less anxious, more confident, and I can find some kind of sleep rhythm. 

Until then, I'm still on the night shift. 

And I won't lie: it's messed with my head a little. 

I like spooky. Halloween is my favorite holiday. My dad likes to say that I'm Claire from Modern Family. But that's just it: spooky. I love horror, but I tend to swerve more toward ghosts, and creepy forests, and old legends, haunted Victorian houses. I rewatch Sleepy Hollow every year, and prefer Crimson Peak to Nightmare on Elm Street. Less existential dread horror, more creature feature horror. Vampires, and werewolves, and Loch Ness Monster documentaries. It's fun to be frightened by fictional monsters. 

But as someone who's grown up on farms, I've learned it's not Lon Chaney Jr. who's going to come at you across a field at night. 

When I worked at an "in town" farm, I came face to face with coyotes on multiple occasions. My boss's son shot one, one day, and brought it around in the golf cart to show us all. Tall, leggy, shaggy: it looked just like a wolf. In movies, on news clips, they're small, skinny, furtive creatures. They snatch a few toy dogs in Cali every year, but are solitary, skittish, and not a threat to humans. Right? If that's your coyote experience, you've never run up on an Eastern coyote. Nor heard them howling at night. Eastern coyotes travel in packs, hunt in packs, routinely bring down deer, and are as tall as my dog. Thick-coated, like a wolf, less fearful, known to kill sheep, and goats, and small donkeys. There are three packs who spend their days in the woods that border my farm. If an ambulance siren breaks the peace of an afternoon, you hear them start up, one, two, three, like sirens of their own. That awful hyena squalling. 

About four years ago, I heard a mountain lion in the woods for the first time. Georgia Fish & Wildlife are adamant they don't live here, but there's no faking that sound. That spine-tingling, murdered-woman shriek. It's the sound a female makes while trying to attract a mate, and I've only ever heard it in January and February - mountain lion mating season. Go Google "mountain lion scream," and be prepared to have all your hair stand on end. I don't know if the cats in my woods are Carolina panthers come down, or Florida panthers come up, but a friend's caught them on trail cam, so suffice to say they're there, amidst the bobcats, and chuckling foxes, and howling coyotes. The rabbits, the skunks, the woodchucks. It's Wild Kingdom out here, northwest of Atlanta. 

These are the animals I've been thinking of, as I stand shivering, scanning with the flashlight. When I see eyeshine coming toward us up from the hollow, fast and unafraid, while Strider sounds the alarm. When I hear the drip and plop of heavy dew, and the who-cooks-for-you call of the barred owls, the resonant whooooo of the great horned owls. When I hear some odd, gargling shriek that I can't identify, but which echoes through the hollows and hills; shivers through the bare tree trunks; ehcos strangely in the rocks. 

Night shifts with Strider have left me wanting to write a proper monster tale. Fitting it into the repertoire is the challenge. If only I could get more sleep...