A long night with restless critters

What an effing long night it was last night, I was sleeping in the tent when the coyotes all went off, singing arias a little too close to me for comfort, followed by a fox coughing in the valley, and as the rutting deer blundered past my tent, one of them knocking down the tent ropes, so it sounded like I was inside a large harp, booooiiiing! Zing! the roof was shaking like crazy. Then the wind came whipping down from the mountain (thanks to Karl the Fog—that heat spell was something—and extreme heat in October is cause for alarm—as in wildfire) and the gust of wind shook the tent like terrier with a rat. I could hear the tall fir trees cracking and groaning which set off the hoot owls. They sounded pretty feeble as they still don’t have their mature hoot down yet. The deer insult was followed by some largish animal attacking the side of the tent, three times with lots and lots of claws getting stuck in the tent wall. Of course, my first thought was Oh my God, a mountain lion or a bobcat is trying to get in—surely it’s not the coyotes. Not what I wanted to think about before drifting off to sleep—especially after coming onto my sleepytime gummy bear. Speaking of bears, by this time, I was really quite cross, and I begin yelling for all I was worth, which scared it—whatever it was—off, and it also brought out the neighbors bearing torches. Meanwhile, my cousin’s crazy cat was zooming around the inside of the tent like a well-oiled lunatic. Whatever was attacking the tent must’ve been trying to attack her. I no sooner got back to sleep when that episode was followed by two raccoons having it out and literally rolling like little fat fur barrels down the slope into the creekbed where they caterwauled and quarreled some more. This performance was repeated throughout the night with copious snarling and fearsome growling and snorting as they made direct contact several times. And at dawn, I had to rescue my cousin’s crazy cat (the one that was racing around the tent) singing her three-note Siamese cat opera, trying to get away from a large puffy stray tabby Tom who was trying to beat the crap out of her. They are all nuts. I chased him off, she was stuck on automatic hiss mode so I couldn’t pick her up and put her in the house. She usually doesn’t sleep outside, so she was pretty freaked out. I am so tired, I am cross-eyed. And now it’s raining. No need to do a rain dance. I’ve been dancing around the garden all night long in my PJs like a dementor screaming at all the wild animals.

The doe’s breakfast
Morning aubade