Country Sounds

Sometimes late at night when I am near a window, I will hear country sounds. These are distinctly different to city life -- probably because in town one hears nearby neighbors, even if only children playing, a neighbor mowing a yard, or simply two people chatting over a backyard fence. But here in the quiet, I have heard sounds I'd not heard since the days at my grandparents' farm.

At night there is the steady noise of tree frogs, cicadas, night creatures.

Or the distant sounds from neighboring farms: a dog barking, cows bellowing.

Once I got up in the wee hours of the morning, and heard a cow making the most awful, mournful bellowing -- it was almost like a pathetic yowling. Over and over, the cow would make this long, sad, echoing squall. The next day I told DH about it, and he said it was because the calf had been taken away from the cow. And people think animals don't have feelings? I doubt I've ever heard a human mother make such a deeply sad, grieving sound at the loss of a child.

Every morning about 7:30 there is a pickup that goes past our house with two large dogs in it. They bark in some strange syncopated rhythm -- yip...yap...yip...yap. The first time we heard it we laughed, but now if we don't hear the dogs, we wonder why.

One night we had a telescope out in the yard, focusing on the bright moon...and gradually there was a bass chorus of frogs from the nearby creek. It seemed to go on and on and on...but was not unpleasant. When a hard wind comes up from that hollow where the creek is, there is a long, echoing sigh, which sweeps over the house, around the eaves and is almost scary in its intensity.

Of course during the day, there's always the chatter of numerous species of birds; some are at the feeder, others in the overgrown bushes at the edge of our yard, which we still haven't eliminated. And at the other neighboring farm, they have goats; the baby goats made the sweetest crying/bleating sound back in early summer. I miss them now, for the farmers sold them at the exotic auction in this community. They were very cute, had long, lop-ears.

Such are the country sounds here...different, but interesting, soothing at times. There is traffic too, of course, but oddly enough, I've become accustomed to it -- and mostly it's during peak hours of people going/coming to/from work. Yet there are many quiet, totally quiet times -- and though the creature sounds are unusual for me, I don't miss the sounds of human noise nearby at all.