Scared Out Of My Bejeepers

It has been blowing a gale all day yesterday and today. I took out some broccoli stems to the bunnies in the dark last night and all around me were those dead pine trees, (they surround our property), which were cracking and squeaking in the heavy winds.  It felt so much like Hallowe'en with all that noise.  It was a real night for Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. I kept looking over my shoulder and I thanked heavens the doggies were with me.... all of them including the ADHD dog.... Bailey!

I am not one to scare easily.  I used to have a boyfriend who would try to scare me by popping out of closets when I got home from work or would pose as having hung himself off the shower rod in the bathroom. He even bought  a retractable knife and stuck it in himself in the kitchen one evening... I found him lying on the floor in the kitchen with a knife sticking out of his chest... but then, I would pose as having fallen down the steps, unconscious, with blood oozing from a gash on my head.... but none of it was real... still it was a situation where it would scare the dickens out of you if you thought for the split minute that it was real. (I got him really good with the falling down the steps one since I acted as if I was unconscious and kept the act up really good.... Ha!)

Then there's Teapot who comes up behind you when you're not expecting it and knocks your knees out from under you. Or sneaks up behind you while your working hard on something and softly whispers in your ear and makes you want to poop in your pants.  Teapot is a little more subtle about his scaring tactics than was that other fellow.

So I have become accustomed to getting the pants scared off me. I try not to think about being scared too often.  But the one thing that scares me beyond all reason is walking through a forest in the night when the wind is blowing.... Oh man does that scare me.

Now the bunny cage is approximately 20 steps from the house and there is nary a tree for another fifty feet beyond but when I walked out there last night I got the creeping sensation that something was watching me. Now we have wild life aplenty around here... as you know, moose have walked right up to the house, deer are common visitors, the coyotes have been skulking around regularly for the past nine years and owls silently pass your head without so much as a howdy do. So when I felt those eyes on me last night, I peered through the dark in an effort to figure out what was watching me. I looked toward the horse paddock and there was Dreamer lazily eating her food which assured me that whatever was watching me was benign at least. And then I peered through the dark toward the alpaca's paddocks and they were all sleepily chewing their cuds quietly.... this too was a good sign.... so why was the hair on the back of my neck standing on end as the wind howled and the trees waved back and forth.

I just couldn't figure it out.

I started back toward the house taking steps slowly so that I wouldn't fall into the holes that the dogs insist on digging. I didn't want to sprain an ankle or worse. Five more steps and I had another look around. Still there was nothing that I could see.... or hear at that point with the wind chimes blowing back and forth on my deck... but I just knew... I just knew that there was something there with me. That's when out of the corner of my eye I saw it.... it looked like a person standing there with a long grey gown that was blowing in the wind.....

I just about jumped out of my skin..... why hadn't she spoken to me..... I called out.... "can I help you?" I thought perhaps she was lost.

Dead silence.... and I mean dead.... just her two arms raising up to beckon to me.

The hair by now was standing not just on the back of my neck but on the top of my head and on my arms and if truth be told I'm sure the hair on my unshaven legs were all standing at attention too! Every skin cell told me to run like the bejeepers...... I was sure that some specter had come to take me to some other realm...... I turned and walked fast thinking, "you're nuts, you're nuts..... there's nothing there.... there can't be..." that's when the best friend of any man or woman came to my aid.

During the renovation of 2009 we were smart enough to install motion detectors on the front deck lights.... Woo hoo! Halalujah! On came the motion detector light as it detected my now very speedy motion.

I turned as I stepped up on to the steps, to look behind me and there blowing in the wind was not the specter of my imagination.... but......

 Which in the daylight looks like this....

It's just the damn tarp that we used last summer for shelter for the alpacas from stormy rainy days. The wind of the last few weeks has torn it to shreds!

Phew! I'm glad I don't scare easily!