things that go bump in the night

we accepted an offer on our house earlier this week. i don't want to jinx the offer. even though it sucked. and it took five months to get. so, i will save the details for a later post. when it's official. since we have just that kind of luck. it made me think of how much i am going to miss the ol' girl. the neighbors. the neighborhood. the convenience. the sound of no snowmobiles. no trains. there is one thing i won't miss. like many of you, i love sleeping with the windows open in the summer. nothing like fresh air. i am not sure exactly when this started to happen. or why i picked up on it. i am a very light sleeper. and one night while i was drifting off to sleep i was rudely awakened. by what, i didn't know. it was like a high pitched monkey sound. it was a sound i had never heard in my life. the funny thing was is that it moved. i would hear it in the front of the yard. and then it moved to the back of the yard. it moved all night. i knew because i was awake. lying in bed. mad. every time this thing moved it woke me up. it was a chupacabra. i knew it. it was the only explanation. this went on for weeks. seemed like years. my husband said it was a cicada. i said he was crazy. i know what those sound like. and that wasn't it. my husband would go out on the deck after dark and stand there and listen for it. he went out in the front yard and listened for it. he couldn't hear it. because chupacabra don't come around when humans are present. he should know this. he watches all of those stupid shows. and believes them. i was at my wit's end. i was losing sleep. it was consuming me. until the day, months later, i came face to face with it. one day i came home from work, after pulling into the garage, i walked down to get the mail. and then i heard it. i stopped dead in my tracks. it was the chupacabra. never had it made the sound in daylight. i whipped my head around towards the sound so fast it made me dizzy. and there it was. i laughed. right. out. loud. in my driveway. it was my neighbor's sprinkler. you know, the tractor kind. with wheels. well, this explains everything. why the sound was moving during the night. let me tell you our neighbor, marv, has the greatest lawn. ever. and it doesn't surprise me that he is up all hours of the night wheeling his sprinkler all over the lawn. apparently, it just needs a little oil.