4/26/17 Sounds

Armadillo Noises

     It was a dark, stormy Friday night. I was walking through the forest on a back route to end up arriving at my house around 9:00. It was only about a 10 minute walk and a fourth mile through the woods. I was familiar with a lot of the brush and surroundings, but that night I ran into an unexpected thorn bush. I was carefully removing each and every thorn from my khaki shorts. After a few minutes, I started focusing on the thorns less and steered my attention to an unusual sound. This was a sound that I had never encountered before tonight. It was dark, but there were two dim streetlights in the distance that made it easy enough to see where the sound was coming from. My first thought was an injured squirrel or a bizarre bird. I kept listening and listening closer. Finally I came to a conclusion of what object the noise had been coming from. There was a rock looking shell about 12 feet away from where I was still trapped in the thorn bush. I heaved a stick at it as the noise was getting louder. The stick missed by a good foot by the object turned around. At that moment, I realized I had just seen my first armadillo.