Something Spooky this way Comes

 

As I sat in my lawn chair on the driveway in the space I make into a "patio" in summer I could hear a nibbling, crunching sound behind me.

I don't like to move when I am out there...for about an hour and a half most mornings...because I am counting birds and and I want them to think I am just part of the scenery. For the most part they do, and sometimes Song Sparrows hop right up to my feet seeking the seeds of the weedy grasses that sneak in along the herb and flower beds.

Thus despite the somewhat uncomfortable feeling of something behind me, I tried to interpret the sounds rather than getting up to check.

Deer? I speculated. Probably not. It is bow season and we are not seeing them. Besides, what would they be eating there among the frozen cosmos and California poppies?

Bunny? Yeah, could be. Mr. Bun, Liz's tame domestic rabbit that escaped and lives among the wild things has no fear of me and seems to enjoy my company out there. But, no, he was over by the sheep in the driveway to the barn.

Birds! It had to be birds. Maybe sparrows shuffling leaves for buggy tidbits. Maybe the Golden-crowned Kinglet I have been unable to photograph so far this year was just that close.

I tried to concentrate on the waves of titmice and chickadees shuttling in and out of the feeders...but that weird shuffling, crackling, sound made me kinda nervous.

Finally I stood up and turned around to find.....dum, da, dum, dum.....the mulberry trees were dropping their leaves. Sometimes they do it like that, just shrugging off every single leaf in one single day, almost in a single hour. There was a steady, ruffling patter of them joining their cohorts in golden-green heaps on the ground behind my chair.

I went back to counting, but no matter how long I sat there, that sound, so reminiscent of something...or someone...creeping up behind me, kept the hairs raised on the back of my neck and my mind on high alert.

I gave up and went walking instead.