Rear Window…Disturbia–call it what you will. A Hitchcock themed moment by any other name is still uncategorically disturbing. Usually I try to find the humor in the absurd, but what my family witnessed last night only hours after the solar eclipse occurred in Gemini (the sign of neighbors) is as tragic as any event can possibly be and I will not make light of it. Instead, I’ll attempt to frame the horror of what my husband, my daughter and I witnessed while we were eating our dinner outside on our deck last night.
It was about 7:45pm, we’d just finished a light dessert of sweet strawberries. We were in that comfortable place where you feel full, are enjoying one another’s company, and are reluctant to go back inside cause mother nature has fashioned such an idyllic spring day.
There was a brief lull in the conversation that was suddenly filled with something profoundly ugly. A neighbor down the mountain from us with a house set in the woods started yelling something unintelligible in front of his home. A tortured cry from a high-pitched dog followed on the heels of the man’s angry outburst that could only have come from a small dog that was suddenly in a tremendous amount of pain. The wailing continued in short bursts from the dog and then a complete, eerie silence followed.
Moments later, a very young child ran out of that same home and screamed, “The dog is dead!” and he began to cry hysterically. And then…a complete, eerie silence followed.
Not long after, the man came back outside, walked around the front yard a bit and went inside his garage and shut the door, followed by a complete, eerie silence that remained…
Coincidence? Don’t believe in them.’
All this week, my daughter has been studying and writing a report on animal abuse, my dear Facebook friend yesterday found sick kittens under a porch that had to be put down, and in the middle of the night, last night, I heard that sweet little dog wailing twice, while I slept, as if he were wanting me to write about his tragic story. I opened my eyes to check on my own sweet Cavalier asleep at my feet and saw he was panting heavily and twitching, experiencing a nightmare of his own at the very same time. Coincidence? Don’t believe in them.
Animals in the guise of human beings should not exist, but they do. And as long as man continues to react first and think later, the tortured wails will continue, followed by a complete and eerie sound of silence that sucks each and every one of us into its black hole.