midnight [really 2am] intrusions

i present to you, specimen "a" = watchdog:
quake in the fear of its terrifying exterior!

so last night (this morning), lillie kept growling and barking at something. now bailey has gotten into a bad habit of barking for seemingly no reason, so i kind of shrugged it off and hoped it would stop. i even called out the window (the dogs sleep on the porch) for lillie to stop barking, but she persisted with her low growl followed by a sharp bark. if you have dogs, you know that there are certain barks for certain things - play, fight, warning, etc. this particular bark sounds like it is escaping from her throat where, though she tries, it can no longer be contained. it's a warning bark. then it clicked that it was LILLIE barking, and that she doesn't usually bark for no reason, especially not in the middle of the night.

i tapped the sleeping andrew and asked him if he was going to go check on it, and i was met with a slamming of the covers and a "fine!" which... if you know me, did not set well. i told him to forget it and that i'd go check on what it was. [i have learned, through this year of marriage, 3 things: andrew does not like being woken up - no matter what the reason; andrew does not seem to think that i, as a woman, need protection from scary things; and that no manner of guilt-trip i may provide will change these things.] so i went out and let bailey - our "guard dog" off her leash and told her to go find whatever it was.

now, bailey is great for a lot of reasons, but mostly because she barks really loudly and generally scares the pants off people, and because she won't run away. i knew that if i let her go find this scary thing, she'd probably frighten it off, and she'd come back when she was done or had reached the boundaries of our property. well i was right about her barking and coming back, but i still didn't know what it was lurking in the dark shadows of our woodsy lot, and it seemed more like she was interested in me throwing something for her to retrieve than she was finding this midnight intruder. however, i knew that the thing was still there, because though the barking had ceased, i could still hear lillie's low growl beside me.

lillie is great for lots of reasons as well, mostly that she's really smart, runs INCREDIBLY fast (and quickly too - for dad), and she is committed... to me, to catching bunnies she finds, to the scent of the deer on a trail... to protecting the home... to NOT stopping at the end of our property and returning if i let her chase off scary things like the pitt-bull that kept coming after me in our yard in boone... hypothetically speaking of course - hahaha. so while i knew if i turned her out after it, she would certainly find the scary thing, i also didn't know if she'd ever come back. and i worried, if it was a person, she'd get shot (after all, we do live in johnston county). so i continued to peer through the trees and out towards the direction of her glare but kept her on the porch.

andrew came out to the porch, since i hadn't returned to bed, just as i saw a figure walk past some lights out by the road. "at least they're out by the road and not in the field," i thought. so immediately my mind went on alert. either these people were trying to steal something, or they were making a drug deal on the only shady, uninhabited part of our street (right in front of our home). we continued to watch, as a second car drove up and turned around. still growling from the watchdog, still not sure what's going on. i asked andrew to check it out, but he preferred not to. the two cars' flashers turned on, and somehow that seemed less threatening. so i started heading down the driveway in my pj's and bare feet, bailey at my side. i didn't go very far though because i didn't have shoes on... and my brain was starting to take over and tell my body that it was probably no a good idea to approach unknown people in the middle of the night... in pj's (and more importantly, without a bra - what if i had to run?!).

that's when andrew broke out the phone to call the police. just as he was dialing, the cars began slowly, SLOWLY (like at a speed of .2 mph) pulling up the road. at that moment we realized they were probably just having car trouble and had broken down right in front of our house... perhaps on the way home? andrew had already dialed though, so we asked the sheriff to ride by... a few moments later, a car whizzed past the house, turned around in the cul-de-sac at the end of the road, and whizzed out of the neighborhood.

i guess it was the sheriff... and i guess the whole nocturnal event was nothing more than some people with car trouble, but i am certainly tempted to go get a shotgun and take some classes on how to use it.