Dog Barking

Tonight, after finishing dinner, we watched a show. After a few minutes, I stood up and used the back of one of our chairs to hold steady while doing some of my physical therapy exercises. Nagini, our black lab mix (with some Great Dane in him, too) started growling like we've never heard from him before.

He growled at one of our menacing living room windows. By this point, it was already dark outside, too. And we all know it's a fact that the scariest times happen at night. He started ferociously barking, we hope to protect us from whatever imaginary threat he thought he saw through or reflected from the window. I looked out into the back yard, cupping my hands around my eyes to better see anything he might find threatening. I looked once, twice, nothing.

There was an extension cord wrapped and sitting on the window sill. Perhaps Nagini thought the tan snake was coiling, preparing to strike him at a moment's notice. To show him how tame the extension cord was, I picked it up and dropped it on the floor. His big-bad-dog barking continued.

It might've been the reflection he saw of Lonnie and me in the window itself. I raised the blinds thinking that might calm him. No matter how many times I looked, each time finding nothing but our back yard right where it was supposed to be, he continued to bark.

I didn't think of this at the time, but maybe he was seeing a spirit. It is Halloween Eve, not that that's the time they all come out, especially to be peeking in our windows. Still...creepy. And now I will find some way to go to sleep while my wild imagination works toward a goal of no sleep for me at all, mulling over what could be lurking in our back yard. The stories in my mind are endless. My mind is like a bad neighborhood...you don't go in there alone.

*tingling and shivering*