Noisy Night

We had a thunderstorm around midnight last night.  Wind, thunder and bright flashes of lightening, accompanied by pounding rain.  I love thunderstorms and miss the ones at home in Florida.  Last night the rain cooled things down, temporarily and it was nice to lie in bed and listen to the rain and thunder.

About 2 a.m. one of the cats decided to go hunting in my ceiling.  I have a family of rats living in the corner of my “attic”.  In my living room/bedroom.  I see rat poop and I hear them and see them occasionally but so far they have ignored every tempting treat I’ve put in the rat trap.

The cats have been hunting every night for them, which is fine by me.  I prefer they don’t wait until the wee hours, though.  To get up into the ceiling, they leap off the 3 foot base of the fale next door onto the wire over the window in my bed/living room.  My house is made of tin and not particularly sturdy, so when the cats hit the wire and latch on with their claws, it sounds like someone has thrown a 20 lb rock at my tin house.  Like a bomb going off.

Then they climb up the outside wall to where there are gaps between the walls and the roof.  That’s where they crawl into the space over the ceiling.  That is followed by much commotion as they try to maneuver in a very narrow space while hunting the rats.

I heard one loud squeal that seemed to trail away from the house.  Clearly, one of the rats had escaped.  Then I heard cat yowls and a thud as the cat leaped to the ground and ran after the rat.  I hope the cat won the battle.

About 3:30 a.m. something woke up the dogs.  There was a dog war in front of my fale.  It happens every night when someone walks through our yard.  It happens when I walk through the yard in the dark going to the road to catch the bus to the ferry.  The dogs don’t recognize me and go in full attack mode.

Last night there were at least a dozen dogs, fighting.  There was a lot of barking and growling which is typical.  There were also a couple of dogs howling, which is not. 

I don’t know if it was the dogs that set off the rats again but after the dogs moved off to fight in the neighbor’s yard the rats who live over my head got into a tizzy.  There was squealing.  There was scurrying.    I finally got back to sleep around 5 a.m.  Then the church bells started a few minutes later.  Around 6a.m. I got up after being awakened by the pigs.  They usually aren’t up quite that early and I’m not sure what one of them was unhappy about but one was chasing the other.  Both making a lot of pig noises.  After the brief chase, one came back to lie on my front porch.  She was wheezing and making annoyed noises.

As I type this I can hear the sound of the horn blowing to call the fisherman to go out fishing together.  My family has their stereo on as do the neighbors.  Different songs.

Now there's a large group of young men marching down the main road, singing.  Not sure why.  Probably trying to raise money.  Could be a soccer team or church youth group.

  I thought a rural village would be a quiet place.  It’s not.  Last night was just particularly noisy.