More Spookiness

Animals sometimes act in peculiar ways. Cats, squirrels, and birds often give me reason to consider how odd they can be.  They don’t always seem like just dumb animals, they can seem to know more than they are given credit for.

Our neighbors across the street have a black and white cat. For about six months that cat sat on the corner of our deck rail outside the front door looking in at us most evenings.  If we went to the door and said, “Hi Kitty!, it looked us in the eye and blinked, its large round eyes seeming full of knowledge,  and continued to sit there. We found that interesting and just a tiny bit disturbing. Some mornings I’d look out the window and there Kitty would be perched on the hood or roof of my daughter’s car looking at our house. Every now and then I’d come home and find the cat curled up on the grill on the deck looking around.  Occasionally it would be lying in one of our deck chairs keeping an eye on things. If I approached, it blinked at me a couple times before getting up and scurrying away.  It doesn’t come over here as much anymore, but we see it sitting at the end of their driveway looking up and down the street, as you might see an old man do.

We have squirrels that climb up the screen on one of the windows to get to the roof with a lot of noise as their claws try to get a grip when they scrabble up the window. Sometimes they come and sit on the same deck rail the cat sat on looking in the front door at us.  This was especially true following our evicting a squirrel who chewed through a roof vent and screen to take up residence in the attic. The creature sat on its perch, staring, shaking its tail, chittering and hissing until it finally gave up and scurried away.  During one rain storm it sat, tail curled up over its head in the deluge staring at the front door crying.  I admit, it made me feel a little bad but there are plenty of trees around where it could have taken shelter. It was weird.

We have birds who occasionally try to build a nest under the eaves above the front window and while attempting the impossible repeatedly fly into the window with a loud “thunk!”  There are times when a small bird, like a sparrow, lands on the deck rail across from the front door and appears to be looking in, and occasionally lights upon the screen in the door for a few seconds before flitting away.  Sometimes a flock of grackles descends on the yard, perching in trees and landing on the grass searching for insects.  They are noisy and there can be so many that the yard is black with them before they take off as one and land in the next yard.  It’s a little unnerving how they do that, more so since I repeatedly watched “The Birds” by Alfred Hitchcock when I was a kid.  It scared me every time, but having 3 brothers I didn’t want to be a “scaredy cat” so I bravely watched it with them.  I haven’t watched that movie in years, but if I did I’m sure it would give me bad dreams

I don’t know what makes animals act in such mysterious ways.  Could it be they are reincarnations of people we have known?  Probably it’s just one of the peculiarities of nature.  Of course, you never know.