Things That Go Bump in the Night

Our bike and some garden hoses were stolen during the night a few weeks ago. The bike was chained to a pipe right under our bathroom window, and the hoses were only a few feet away from our open bedroom window. We did hear a little noise at one point, but we thought it was the cat and went back to sleep. We've been more cautious since then and try to check out any unusual sounds we hear during the night.

Last week we both woke up to the sound of footsteps on the rough concrete floor of the carport. We snapped on the lights and looked out the window, expecting to see someone running away. We saw nothing. We turned the lights off and got back in bed.

A few minutes later the footsteps sounded again. This time David yelled, "Go away!" The steps continued at the same slow rate. He yelled again, "What are you doing?" The sound continued. We both looked out the window again, and again we saw nothing. But we could still hear the sound of the slow footsteps on the concrete.

After yelling a few more times with no change in the sounds, David got his robe on and took the big flashlight with him to go outside and have a look. He walked out into the yard--and saw nothing. He shined the flashlight onto the carport--nothing. Both of us could still hear the crunching sound of steps on a rough surface. Then David noticed that there was a huge barrel full of wood shavings near our window. Perhaps some animal had gotten down inside the wood shavings and couldn't get out. We both decided that must be what we were hearing. I had visions of a big snake or rat thrashing around in there. Surely whatever it is will find its way out by morning, we thought, so we climbed back in bed. We set the fan on high to block out the noise and went back to sleep.

The next morning we woke up to the same scratching, crunching sound. David stepped outside to do a daylight investigation, although we had both decided that we would wait for reinforcements before tipping over the barrel. "Linda, come look," he yelled. I wasn't sure I really wanted to look, but I gingerly stepped outside onto the carport. "Here's our intruder," he said as he motioned me over. He pointed down to a cardboard box that was sitting next to the barrel.

The "footsteps" we heard were the scratching and clawing motions of a huge dung beetle as it tried to climb up the wall of the box! The box and the carport amplified the sound sufficiently to make us think we had a serious nighttime visitor.

We released the dung beetle from his cardboard prison and had a good laugh at ourselves.