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   Last week, my wife, our dog, Billie, and I were spending a normal evening watching television. Yes, most poodles enjoy television, especially animal shows and old westerns. Suddenly Billy was distracted from his program and stared at the door. I did not hear anything, but I’ve learned not to call the dog a liar. If he alerts us to the fact something is going on, he is almost always correct. I turned down the volume on the TV and listened with him.

The temperature was around 15° below 0 with a stiff breeze bringing the wind chill down to close to 30 below. When the temperature gets extremely low, the ice on large bodies of water makes some very interesting sounds. The three of us sat quietly and suddenly heard a muffled boom that echoed down the valley. Billie looked startled and wanted outside to check it out. He and I both got as far as sticking our heads out the door and stopped. For me it was too cold to go any farther. For him, he was interested in checking out strange noises but not curious enough to go out alone. He was willing to back me up but not lead the way. About that time, the ice boomed again as the expanding ice caused a crack to race across the ice on the lake. This was followed by high pitched scraping sound as large sheets of ice overrode others. We were satisfied nothing was coming to get us and went back to watching zoo animals on television.

In the early evenings of most days, a person can hear choruses of assorted owls communicating throughout the area. If a person did not know what it was, those first evening calls would make the hair stand up on the back of their neck. The calls range from screeches to hoots with some sounding almost human. Even when a person knows what is making the strange noises, it can startle one.

   The most creepy noise in nature has to be the mating call of a bobcat. Bobcats have a wide range of vocalizations, most of which we do not recognize as a bobcat. I have heard hissing noises as well as low grunts I did not know until after the fact that a bobcat was nearby. Many years ago, on one of my first deer hunts, I was sitting in a tree in bitterly cold weather waiting for daylight. I was having a genuinely miserable time when I heard what sounded exactly like a woman screaming in the nearby timber. I had no idea what it was, could not see 10 feet away, and was freezing to death. If whatever got that woman came after me, I hope to get a shot in before it attacked me. That experience came really close to my thinking deer hunting was not a good idea. When it was later explained to me that it was only a bobcat, not all deer seasons are painfully cold, and a person does not have to sit in a tree with the wind trying to blow you out of your stand, I decided deer hunting is good fun. It does though still unnerve me to hear a bobcat scream, but it is just another of those strange noises we hear in nature

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