Totally going to pay for this tomorrow, but Guilt wouldn't allow me to go to bed without posting the promised craziness. Darn that Guilt!
Disclaimer: I am not editing. Please excuse my word mess tonight (this morning?).
So. In the front door post, we established that I tend towards flipping channels when I can't sleep. To be honest? I flip channels constantly because I can't stand commercials. But for the purposes of this post, we're just honing in on the 2:00am flipping. M'kay?
Last week, I couldn't sleep so I watched some show on the Discovery? History? (I have no clue) channel about the Taj Mahal, feeling sure it would put me right out. Not. Probably because I spent the entire hour flipping back and forth to the Food Network to watch some edible ornament challenge. [Those folks are Serious about their art, I tell you what.]
Still awake, I let it roll over to the next show.... Ooooooh Monster Hunters! Or at least I think that's what it was called. I'd actually heard about that show previously and had wanted to watch it (research!) so I was good to go. It was about Bigfoot and they were going to pick apart that classic 16mm film from the 60's. Cool. Or so I thought.
The show opened with a 911 call from a man we'll call Frantic Frank. Frantic Frank had apparently just seen something walk across his back yard! "A man?" the operator asked him. "Something really big! 7 feet tall, at least!" Frantic Frank tells her. This goes back and forth a few times and then Frantic Frank shrieks and tells her, "He's looking right at me through the window!" At this point, I recognized the fear in Frantic Frank's voice all too well. Every hair on my body stood up and immediately, I glanced at the tiny crack between the blinds and the glass of my front window (as I am wont to do from time to time now).
I should have gone to bed. But noooooo, the show had piqued my interest and I wanted to know what eventually happened with Frantic Frank. I never did find out BUT during the course of the show, they had this interesting little group of women camping out in the forests of Washington state, looking for signs of Bigfoot.
Long story short... the show ended and I did not feel it resolved a lingering question I had about one of the women highlighted. So what do I do? I GOOGLE! Because, obviously, I am just tired enough to be stupid. Soon, I'm clicking links left and right, eventually ending up at a website for a Texas-based Bigfoot Research group.
Where's The Fruitbat?! Texas? Bigfoot?
At this point, NORMAL people turn the computer off and go to bed. Oh, but not me!! No, no, no. I had to see what the heck they were talking about because everyone KNOWS Bigfoot only exists in the Pacific NW. Right?
Throwing the last vestiges of my intelligence to the wind... I click a shiny, SHINY link in the side bar which takes me to Texas Sightings. And look! There's the county I live in! And there are sightings in my county! And.. and.. WAIT A MINUTE.... there are MORE sightings in MY county than any other in the Entire Freaking State!!
At this point, NORMAL people turn the computer off and go to bed. You know the drill. You KNOW I had to click the next shiny link that would take me to the details of every sighting made in my county. You know, right?
In case you didn't know. I did it. I clicked that link. I read those statements, and details, and promptly discovered that almost ALL of the sightings happened within a 10-20 mile radius of MY HOME. One of them a mere 8 miles away and along a stretch of road where odd things have been known to happen.
Did I ever mention I live in the Boonies... like in the real honest to goodness WOODS? Seriously, folks. Across from me sits a little over 500 acres. Behind me, there are a couple of houses but the private road we share butts up against a few thousand acres of deeply wooded ranch land. If you Google Earth my house, I look like a tiny postage stamp in the middle of nowhere.
And if that weren't enough... I'm telling you, strange things are afoot around here. Old men driving around with full grown deer wearing collars in the back of their truck, standing next to their dog; guys sitting out in front of the little gas station, bottle feeding baby Javelina pigs (Nasty, nasty mean little suckers - one of them went after me!); having a LOOSE EMU race you down the road you're driving on... that type of stuff.
So, of course...
* I immediately began to recall every sound I'd ever heard while sitting outside my house... and wondered.
* Felt an intense desire to wake up Mr. Clean and tell him.... "We have Bigfoot in our back yard!"
I didn't wake Mr. Clean, but I did tell him the next day. He laughed at me.
So I called my best friend, Wahoo, and told her all about it. And then SHE told me... "Oh My Lord. Do you remember? That night?" And Oh. My. Lord... I do! I do SO remember that night (specifically the end of it). And being relatively... possibly... somewhat dramatically inclined with my imagination, I have to wonder. What if?
But then came the clincher.
While talking to Wahoo, I remembered that about 10 years ago we had this huge uproar about a black bear being on the loose in the area. People were seeing it while driving down the road and the nearby ranchers had been losing calves like there was no tomorrow.
Please note: Black bears have not been indigenous to this area for a long, long, lonnnnng time.
Anyhow, there were so many sightings and complaints, the Parks & Wildlife guys brought out a bear trap and tried to catch it. They never did. The funny (SO not Ha Ha funny) thing is... ALL of the sightings -- which occurred less than 2 miles from my house, by the way -- were the same. Everyone who'd seen the bear said either, "It was standing in the middle of the road on it's hind feet," OR, "It standing beside the road on it's hind feet."
So of course, one could apply Occam's Razor to this quandary and say... They didn't catch the bear because it was not a bear. I'm just sayin'.
And last night... I heard some freaky ass sounds while sitting on my back porch. Not Coyote. Not Fox. And definitely Not Peacock (another story I'll bring to you soon!). Of course, they were also definitely NOT just my imagination.
And Mr. Clean? Definitely still laughing at me. The booger. He can laugh all he wants... but I'm still creepd out and I'm still not going out there at night by myself.
Disclaimer: I am not editing. Please excuse my word mess tonight (this morning?).
So. In the front door post, we established that I tend towards flipping channels when I can't sleep. To be honest? I flip channels constantly because I can't stand commercials. But for the purposes of this post, we're just honing in on the 2:00am flipping. M'kay?
Last week, I couldn't sleep so I watched some show on the Discovery? History? (I have no clue) channel about the Taj Mahal, feeling sure it would put me right out. Not. Probably because I spent the entire hour flipping back and forth to the Food Network to watch some edible ornament challenge. [Those folks are Serious about their art, I tell you what.]
Still awake, I let it roll over to the next show.... Ooooooh Monster Hunters! Or at least I think that's what it was called. I'd actually heard about that show previously and had wanted to watch it (research!) so I was good to go. It was about Bigfoot and they were going to pick apart that classic 16mm film from the 60's. Cool. Or so I thought.
The show opened with a 911 call from a man we'll call Frantic Frank. Frantic Frank had apparently just seen something walk across his back yard! "A man?" the operator asked him. "Something really big! 7 feet tall, at least!" Frantic Frank tells her. This goes back and forth a few times and then Frantic Frank shrieks and tells her, "He's looking right at me through the window!" At this point, I recognized the fear in Frantic Frank's voice all too well. Every hair on my body stood up and immediately, I glanced at the tiny crack between the blinds and the glass of my front window (as I am wont to do from time to time now).
I should have gone to bed. But noooooo, the show had piqued my interest and I wanted to know what eventually happened with Frantic Frank. I never did find out BUT during the course of the show, they had this interesting little group of women camping out in the forests of Washington state, looking for signs of Bigfoot.
Long story short... the show ended and I did not feel it resolved a lingering question I had about one of the women highlighted. So what do I do? I GOOGLE! Because, obviously, I am just tired enough to be stupid. Soon, I'm clicking links left and right, eventually ending up at a website for a Texas-based Bigfoot Research group.
Where's The Fruitbat?! Texas? Bigfoot?
At this point, NORMAL people turn the computer off and go to bed. Oh, but not me!! No, no, no. I had to see what the heck they were talking about because everyone KNOWS Bigfoot only exists in the Pacific NW. Right?
Throwing the last vestiges of my intelligence to the wind... I click a shiny, SHINY link in the side bar which takes me to Texas Sightings. And look! There's the county I live in! And there are sightings in my county! And.. and.. WAIT A MINUTE.... there are MORE sightings in MY county than any other in the Entire Freaking State!!
At this point, NORMAL people turn the computer off and go to bed. You know the drill. You KNOW I had to click the next shiny link that would take me to the details of every sighting made in my county. You know, right?
In case you didn't know. I did it. I clicked that link. I read those statements, and details, and promptly discovered that almost ALL of the sightings happened within a 10-20 mile radius of MY HOME. One of them a mere 8 miles away and along a stretch of road where odd things have been known to happen.
Did I ever mention I live in the Boonies... like in the real honest to goodness WOODS? Seriously, folks. Across from me sits a little over 500 acres. Behind me, there are a couple of houses but the private road we share butts up against a few thousand acres of deeply wooded ranch land. If you Google Earth my house, I look like a tiny postage stamp in the middle of nowhere.
And if that weren't enough... I'm telling you, strange things are afoot around here. Old men driving around with full grown deer wearing collars in the back of their truck, standing next to their dog; guys sitting out in front of the little gas station, bottle feeding baby Javelina pigs (Nasty, nasty mean little suckers - one of them went after me!); having a LOOSE EMU race you down the road you're driving on... that type of stuff.
So, of course...
* I immediately began to recall every sound I'd ever heard while sitting outside my house... and wondered.
* Felt an intense desire to wake up Mr. Clean and tell him.... "We have Bigfoot in our back yard!"
I didn't wake Mr. Clean, but I did tell him the next day. He laughed at me.
So I called my best friend, Wahoo, and told her all about it. And then SHE told me... "Oh My Lord. Do you remember? That night?" And Oh. My. Lord... I do! I do SO remember that night (specifically the end of it). And being relatively... possibly... somewhat dramatically inclined with my imagination, I have to wonder. What if?
But then came the clincher.
While talking to Wahoo, I remembered that about 10 years ago we had this huge uproar about a black bear being on the loose in the area. People were seeing it while driving down the road and the nearby ranchers had been losing calves like there was no tomorrow.
Please note: Black bears have not been indigenous to this area for a long, long, lonnnnng time.
Anyhow, there were so many sightings and complaints, the Parks & Wildlife guys brought out a bear trap and tried to catch it. They never did. The funny (SO not Ha Ha funny) thing is... ALL of the sightings -- which occurred less than 2 miles from my house, by the way -- were the same. Everyone who'd seen the bear said either, "It was standing in the middle of the road on it's hind feet," OR, "It standing beside the road on it's hind feet."
So of course, one could apply Occam's Razor to this quandary and say... They didn't catch the bear because it was not a bear. I'm just sayin'.
And last night... I heard some freaky ass sounds while sitting on my back porch. Not Coyote. Not Fox. And definitely Not Peacock (another story I'll bring to you soon!). Of course, they were also definitely NOT just my imagination.
And Mr. Clean? Definitely still laughing at me. The booger. He can laugh all he wants... but I'm still creepd out and I'm still not going out there at night by myself.
