Getting Used to Country Noises

Those who’ve grown up in urban areas get used to round the clock mechanized sounds. Hearing lawn mowers, leaf blowers, drivers gunning engines, or jets roaring overhead causes no panic. In fact, car alarms, sirens, and even crashes at nearby intersections generate only short-term interest. Move that same population to the country and note how their eyes widen at every noise.

No matter a sound’s origin, imagination multiplies it.  A squeak or scritch in the wall is a rodent infestation. Coyotes howling alarms pets and humans alike. You’d think werewolves had invaded. A rabbit shrieking its death cry is enough to send former city dwellers into a catatonic state. Knowing this about my former big city neighbors, I wondered how I’d handle living a mile from our nearest neighbor when we moved from the edge of Ellis to an isolated hilltop in Trego County.

It didn’t take long to find out. We moved in December, and resident wild canines serenaded us to sleep on wintry nights. In short time, I looked forward to these rural lullabies. We also had nesting owls in a tree outside our bedroom. Again, once I recognized the source of those sleep inducing hoots and murmurs, I nodded off quickly. The occasional death cries of expiring cottontails raised my heart rate, but once I identified the source, I knew another hilltop inhabitant had dined well.

What I wasn’t prepared for were unexpected and repetitive tap, tap, tappings of woodpeckers. All those trees lining nearby Big Creek and the cedar siding on our house turned the area into a battle of feathered percussionists. Because we fed black oil sunflower seeds and suet to resident birds, we regularly enjoyed watching the unique flight pattern of sapsuckers, flickers, redheaded, hairy, and downy woodpeckers. They joined a myriad of other species at our feeders. All our guests were delightful, but the hard-headed, sharp-beaked creatures especially charmed us.

That is until they decided to drill for insects in our cedar siding. The first time this happened, it was early morning and our resident game warden was on duty checking hunters. A sharp and continual rapping on the north side of the house awakened me and our young daughters from deep sleep.

After peering out windows, expecting to see someone parked in the drive and pounding unceasingly on the outside wall, I was surprised to find no vehicle in sight. When we couldn’t identify the source of the intense and unending tapping, the girls’ and my imaginations went into over drive. We’d watched one too many scary movies.

For just a while, had someone been recording, the three of us would have qualified for America’s Funniest Home Videos. Pajama clad, we crept about looking for our tormentor and trying to decide whether this situation required a 911 call. Thank God, we identified our intruder before we punched that button.

Upon further inspection, I found a pair of flickers wildly attacking our siding. Intent on a tasty meal, they hammered til my presence drove them from their perch.

Recalling that incident and my response still makes me blush. After years of hearing only nature’s noises, I’m a country convert. A few hours in a metropolis and my brain reels from so much man-made sound.