Echoes in the sound.....of.....silence

It's really dark out here at night.  When the traffic dies down on our busy thoroughfare, it's fairly quiet, too.

Which makes the night-time noises 3 times as creepy as if the traffic was still zipping down the road, or the black of night was tempered by the city lighting......

Walking to the rabbit shed to tuck them in for the night, it's dark, quiet, and definitely CREEPY!  

It's not just me.  Jeremy says the same thing.  

The noise you hear all arounnd makes you want to walk a little faster, maybe even run, makes you look behind you to see what is following, makes you want urgently to get into the faint lighting of the rabbit shed or high-tail it back to the safety of the house.

It sounds kind of like raindrops hitting leaves on a tree, but the trees aren't leafed out yet, and, if you stand still, you won't get wet.

The sound is like something stepping softly and stealthily on crunchy leaves, trying not to be heard.    

There are lots of small critters to rustle through those leaves, but usually when that's the case the cats or dogs will be on high alert, ready to pounce.  

It occurred to me that it could be rodents or even large beetles (lots of them!)  Or snakes (LOTS of snakes!).  I thought I'd watch Rocky (the husky) for a clue, because he had just unearthed and killed a shrew earlier in the week.  Nope, no interest at all.

Sly, the indoor-outdoor cat slunk past.  No interest from him, either, even though the skittering sounds were all around me by then.  If I moved, some of the noises stopped, but overall, it was a constant drip-drip-drip or scritch-scratch-scritch sound, in the blackness, in the silence, threatening to freak me out! 

I was stumped, until I sat in the lighted area of the back step one warm night to just listen.....

After a while, something glinted on the ground as it moved.  Salamanders?  Then I focused in on quite a few more "glints", and could see segments of something slimy.  But not a salamander.

Of course!  

We have rich black crumbly topsoil everywhere.....

We have lots of fallen leaves, everywhere.....

There are small holes in the ground that seem to have tufts of leaves and pine needles sticking up out of them, unexplained in their strangeness.....but always plenty of them, even when it hasn't been raining.

If you dig up a shovelful of topsoil anywhere on the property, what will you find?

Nightcrawlers!

They stretch out under the top layer of leaves.  They nose around above the soil looking for a meal.  They are fabulous at breaking down rotting leaves or soggy bits of wood or water-logged pine needles, and making top soil.

They anchor themselves in their holes while they STRETCH out to explore for food......

They grab what they want to eat with their mouth (can you call it a mouth?) and pull their slimy selves, leaf and all, back into their hole.  

Thousands upon thousands of nightcrawlers are munching onfallen leaves from last year.  And it sounds like raindrops.  Or stealthy footsteps on crunchy leaves.  Or rodents dashing through barely concealed tunnels.  Or any number of things, at least when it's dark and quiet and your mind is going a mile-a-minute trying to figure out what unearthly creatures have you surrounded!

The sound of rich black silence is broken by the sound of.....earthworms.

Who knew?

But knowing makes it just a LITTLE less creepy, as we found out last night.  Mystery uncovered, clues finally proving what we needed to know, but......we still quickened out step just a bit as we felt (rather than heard) the crackling and pattering sounds taking over the quiet air around us on our way out to the shed!

:)

 

Laura
http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/