I dearly love my husband, as you all well know. And we have lived together long enough now that I am pretty well attuned to his noises, even when we are on different floors of the house. "Now he is opening the garage door, now he is in the kitchen, now he is parking his keys and wallet, next he will check the table for mail..." etc.
This does not quite extend to his moments of stress, however. If I am sitting in the living room and he is cooking dinner, I can never quite tell whether a forcible "God DAMN it!!" is in reference to him hurting himself, burning something, or swearing at the ballgame on TV. More often than not, when I find out what he was swearing about, my reaction is a very unhelpful, "Really? You made so much angry noise over that? Wasn't that a bit uncalled for?"
And sometimes I get in trouble for that being my initial reaction, like on Sunday when he made that sound and it turned out bacon grease had popped into his eye.
But other times ... both our reactions are more or less spot on.
Last night, he had an event and got home late, like after-11 late. I was already asleep. I started awake when I heard the garage door open, but dozed off again when I realized it was him doing his just-got-home litany. I roused a little when I heard him come upstairs, and we had a short half-conscious-on-my-end conversation and then he headed back downstairs to eat and putter.
And I heard: "Good Fucking Christ!!!"
Only it wasn't preceded or followed by any loud bangs or shattering glass, and then I heard him shut the doors leading from our living room to our hallway -- moving at a rate rather faster than his usual speed.
Muttering a "WTF?" of my own, I got up and came downstairs.
"There's a bird in our house."
"Huh?" (Ardent, you will like this part: When I had dozed off earlier, it was during the X Files episode "Chimera" -- the one with the ravens. So you see, I was having a stroke when I said, "huh?")
"THERE'S A BIRD IN OUR HOUSE. How did you not see this thing?"
"Errrr... it wasn't in here before I went to bed? A bird? Are you sure it's not a bat?"
"I think it's a bird. And that stupid cat. She's just sitting in there. She couldn't care less ... oh, wait, now she sees it."
At this point I was standing behind him, so all I could see was white Oxford button-down shirt and a teeny bit of the living room ceiling as he peeked through the doors.
Then he abruptly turned and shouldered past me. "Well, whatever it is, I'll be damned if it goes upstairs. I'm going to shut the kitchen doors." He headed back around through the hall into the dining room.
I peeked through the living room doors, and sure enough, something was very busy flapping away around our living room and breakfast nook. I still thought it might be a bat, but we have had countless sparrows get trapped in our garage, so it seemed possible one could zing from there into our kitchen, especially as much as the Young Prince leaves doors open. Then too, I've never really observed the flying habits of birds inside houses, so I couldn't be sure. But it did seem to be awfully hyper and not ever alighting anywhere.
NYAB, having shut the doors, completed the downstairs circuit as he ducked into my view. "OK, I'm going to open the back door and hope it flies out." And he headed out on to our deck. I hadn't heard him open the kitchen door leading to the garage, so I went off to do that and give the thing two outlets.
At this point the whole scenario sort of went Wide World of Sports in my mind.
Annnd, it's taking another spin around the living room ... Makes a fast break left and zips through the kitchen, but retreats back to the living room ... Whoops, a misstep there as it thwacks into the fireplace. And it's heading for the door! Ohhh, so close. But it misses and takes another lap.
Etc., etc. I still hadn't gotten a very good look at the thing, mostly because I'm a shrill shrieky girly-girl when it comes to things skittering around my house at eye-level, but also because it was flying fast enough that it looked like it might hurt if it banged into me (not to mention claws and ... beak? teeth?) so I kept reflexively ducking and cringing and wincing whenever it came within 8 feet of me.
I ventured out of the garage and into the kitchen to see if I could get a better look while it was back in the living room. Just as I said, "That is SO not a bird, it's a bat!" I saw it slap into the window. And then there was a flash of white, a flash of dark, and then I heard a very tiny but horrible eek-eek-eeee.
At first I thought it had flown so hard into the window that it had gotten between the curtains and knocked itself out. But no. Our mighty huntress-cat Shays had finally stretched herself, hopped up onto the couch, and taken the thing out in midair.
NYAB called from out on the deck, "I think she killed it. On her second try. She's got it in her mouth. And yeah, I think it was a bat."
"Well for god's sake, don't distract her, you know how she is. She carries things around in her mouth and then she spits them out and they skibble off again."
He said, "Erm, not this time. She just dropped it and it's not moving. Yeah, looks like a bat."
We met in the dining room and both looked down at the limp little furry ex-rodent while the cat sort of preened and licked her paws.
And then my big brave husband got several paper towels and the dustpan and disposed of the body while I danced around on my tiptoes with my shoulders squinched up around my ears and my hands flapping as I sang the "Ew! Ew! Eww!" song. Sigh.
We still don't know how it got in here, or why it waited for NYAB to get home to make its presence known. Here's hoping it was a lone gunman. I don't want to be doing this every night.