My Neighborhood is Writing a Horror Story

My neighborhood is writing a horror story.  I don’t mean that a bunch of people are getting together over finger foods and cocktails and collaboratively penning a piece of pulp fiction.  (Although that sounds kind of awesome so if anyone wants to do that, email me.)  No, I mean, the neighborhood itself seems to be acting out some sort of horrific tale of terror, and I’m upset because A) it’s kind of scary, and B) it’s better than anything I’ve come up with lately.

Most of you are probably going to tell me that I’m overreacting.  Fine.  Go ahead.  I don’t care.  I need to say this, regardless of what you think, in a “cover my butt” sort of way.  I need to go on record with my observations just in case something is actually going on here.  That way, when a monster comes up out of the sewer and devours all of us, you can point to this blog and say, “Huh.  I guess someone should have listened to Carie.”  And before I begin, may I remind you that, despite how crazy Tom Hanks appeared, he turned out to be RIGHT in The Burbs.

The first two unsettling incidents are actually rather sad. I promise not to be graphic, but simply stating the facts could cause some upset, so read at your own risk.

For over five months, a little male cardinal lived in the bushes between our house and our next door neighbors, and he… well, he wasn’t quite right in the head.  He became infatuated with my neighbor’s blue van.  Day in, day out, hour after hour after hour, he would peck at its side mirrors, windshield, and back window, leaving little trails of bird poo down the sides and scratching up the finish.  He was attracted to other cars too—their black SUV, if he had access to the garage, even our cars would do if the blue van was gone.  I also saw him ferociously pecking at our attic window a couple of times, and one day he flew full speed into our glass front door, but survived. 

The little cardinal did not bathe in the birdbath, nor did he mate and build a nest, and I never saw him eat an insect or heard him sing a pretty song.  All he did was peck the van or closest-to-van alternative.  He was a sad, strange, deranged little bird and he drove us all crazy, but after awhile we got sort of used to him and his antics. 

Two weeks ago, the owners of the blue van moved away.  Two days later, I found a pile of red feathers and a small mangled carcass in our yard.  The crazy little cardinal was no more.  I assumed he’d been killed by a cat, but I secretly wondered if the loss of his beloved blue van was the real cause of the little guy’s demise.

Ok, that was to ease you in.  This next one’s worse.

One week after the little cardinal died, I walked Uno up to the park in the center of our neighborhood, and we found the remains of a dead cat in the field there.  Beyond from the usual upset of seeing a dead animal, this concerned me for two reasons.  One, it was only half of the cat.  And two, it was half of a cat I knew.

He didn’t have a name, or if he did I didn’t know it.  He was a stray, a mangy black tom with long white “socks” on his two back feet.  He had been prowling this neighborhood for longer than I’ve lived here and he was tough.  I’d seen him stalk birds (in fact, it was this cat who I assumed killed the crazy cardinal) and chase down other felines, intent on more than a playful romp if he caught them.

His violent death is a mystery.  So far, we are attributing it to a coyote—they live in the greenbelt behind our house, but we have never seen one in the neighborhood.  I don’t like to think of them being in our park.  Whatever it was, it was sad (and gross) to see that old ‘White Socks’ had somehow met his doom.

Ok, the sad stuff is over.  But there is plenty more weirdness.

For instance…

If you read my Facebook posts, you know that Mark and I have seen an increase in the number of scorpions in our house lately.  There have been four sightings in the past two weeks.  And they are larger than usual.

Ok, not THAT large, but still pretty big.

We have also started spotting big furry tarantulas in the neighborhood, and every time we’ve seen one, it has been traveling in the middle of the street, moving fast, seemingly with a destination in mind.  But I have never seen one of the holes where they live, and this confuses me.  When I was growing up in Richardson, we had tarantulas in our yard (one fell off the screen door onto my neck in the seventh grade, but that’s a horror story for another time) but they all lived in easy-to-spot holes in the ground, next to sidewalks or under rocks.  And when we saw the tarantulas, they were usually sitting next to their holes or walking nearby, never “hurrying” down the middle of the street.

That is Mark's brave hand.  If this photo had
audio, you would hear, "Take the picture!
Take the picture! Take the picture!"

There have been an increased number of “For Sale” signs in the neighborhood this month as well.  Off the top of my head, I can think of nine houses that are currently on the market.   So maybe I’m not the only one noticing these creepy incidents.

And then yesterday…

When I walked Uno to the park yesterday, I noticed some suspicious holes under the roots of one of the big oak trees there.  I thought, Ah ha!  Maybe this is where all the tarantulas live!  (That would be really weird because it’s nowhere near where we have actually seen the tarantulas, but whatever.)  Then I noticed that the ground around the tree was littered with enormous dead beetles.  These things were brown, about the size of a walnut, HEADLESS, and sucked dry.  Yeah.

Uno and I backed away slowly and went home and locked the door.

Although the tree-of-death scared me, I was curious about it.  Was there really something living in those holes that feasted on huge beetles?  Also, I didn’t have my camera yesterday and was worried no one would believe me.  So, being the good little investigative blogger that I am, I went back today with my phone so I could take a picture of the holes and the carcasses.  

 

What I found out is this:  The thing that lives in the hole IS the giant beetle!  I saw a couple of live ones crawling around in there.  There was a big one near the entrance but he wasn’t in good light for a picture so I poked him with a stick and made him angry.  So angry that he GROWLED AT ME.  No kidding.  Here is a 25-second video of the giant beetle growling at me.  There is no narration because I was honestly too startled to speak.

So now the question remains, why are their dead HEADLESS brethren lying around outside the holes?  Was there a mass suicide?  Or an attack on the tree by something larger and creepier?  Or have the giant beetles turned on each other?  I didn’t stay around to find out.  I high-tailed it back home and dead-bolted the door.

Like I said before, I know some of you will say I’m crazy.  I’m blowing this whole thing out of proportion, bah, blah, blah.  Fine.  Maybe nothing creepy is going on.  But the way I see it, right now we’ve got people flocking out of a neighborhood where birds and cats are turning up dead, scorpions and tarantulas seem to be on the move, and something is decapitating the giant GROWLING beetles that live underneath a tree in the park.  If that’s not the plot of a horror story, I don’t know what is.

There.  I’ve gone on record.

What I Did on My Pretend Spring Break

One of the downsides of quitting teaching and becoming a full-time pretend-writer-person is that you no longer get a spring break.  Then again, one of the upsides of being a full-time pretend-writer-person is that you can technically take a spring break whenever you want, provided that it is spring-ish and you deserve a break.  Ish.  So, I decided to take a made-up spring break this week.

I'm sure that you are asking yourself, What does a full-time pretend-writer-person DO on a made-up spring break?!  Calm down, I'll tell you.

10 Highlights of My Not-At-All-Needed Break from My Leisurely Life of Pretending to Be a Writer:

** Impromptu visit from my friend Jessica and her baby girl.  Her baby was beautiful and awesome and not at all scared of my big bouncy dog.  Even though Jessica was REALLY just escaping from her in-laws for a half hour, I am still happy that she escaped to my house.  There were chocolate chip cookies and hugs and it was a joyous occasion.  I miss her.

** Learning that Grumpy Cat was in Austin.  I didn’t actually get to meet him, but just knowing he was nearby made me smile.  Which made him frown.

Grumpy Cat visited APA.  But he didn't enjoy it.

** My 10-year-old niece and 14-year-old nephew coming to stay with us for three days.  I gotta say, if you have to have children stay with you, 10-year-olds and 14-year-olds are the way to go.  They can't drive yet, so there is very little chance of them stealing your car, but they are old enough to clean themselves and feed themselves and dress themselves.  Plus, these particular 10-and-14-year-olds are sweet and funny and well-behaved and really cool.  I highly recommend them.  Our time together included games of dominoes and Peggle (<-- this game is SO addictive), a picnic at the Austin Zoo (where no one was attacked by a rooster, but it was close), and a walk around the UT campus (where my niece and I bought matching friendship bracelets).

They were fine, thanks for asking, frog.

** Accidentally setting a fire in my kitchen, which was mostly my husband’s fault.  When Mark was helping me bake chocolate chip cookies (I know, what a jerk, right? No, that’s not the bad part yet) he moved the tea kettle off the stove onto the counter to make room for the sheets of hot gooey cookies.  When he was done, he put the tea kettle back where it belongs on the stove.  (The NERVE of that guy!  No, no, that’s not it either.)  In doing the moving of the tea kettle, he neglected to realize that he had set it right on top of the yellow sticky note I’d been using to bookmark the ooey-gooey cookie recipe, which then adhered itself to the bottom of the kettle.  (NOW, you chastise him.)  So yeah, the next morning when I turned on the burner for tea, a yellow sticky note-sized fire erupted underneath my tea kettle.  No one was harmed, but there was much squealing. 

** Going downtown to see a SXSW show with my friend Emily who is nine-months pregnant.  Her friend Brian is the drummer for The Lone Bellow, a very cool little band out of Brooklyn.  So we took the metro from north Austin downtown to the show at The Stage on 6th Street.  Since no one had the forethought to run extra metro cars during SXSW, the train was already absolutely full when we squeezed on it.  And by squeezed, I mean SQUEEZED.  I'm pretty sure at least three strangers could feel Emily's baby kicking on the way downtown.  All turned out ok though.  There were no births on the metro or at the club or on the crowded spring break sidewalks.  And we had fun partying… very slowly.

I would have taken a photo of our crowded car,
but I couldn't move my arms.

** Getting to educate a Los Angelino on a few of the finer points of Austin.  I shared a table at Strange Brew this week with a nice boy who is addicted to buying shoes and cell phones and who carries a Scientology pamphlet around with him just so he can get people riled up.  He's only been in Austin for a few months and hasn't completely soaked up the culture yet.  I had to explain to him what Gospel Brunch is and when I mentioned The Salt Lick, he stared at me blankly.  I said, "It's a great bar-b-que place out in Driftwood."  And he said, "Like REAL bar-b-que?"  Sigh.  More educating followed.  But then I found out his grandparents are super-famous soap opera stars and suddenly I was the one with the blank look on my face, so I guess we are even.  Ish.

** Seeing Shinyribs perform at Lucy's Fried Chicken.  "Diamond rings and petticoats, burlap bags and billy goats, creamy corn sausage and gravy..."  While I was there, the twelve year old boy next to me with long hair and goofy glasses somehow got a gig playing bass at the Continental Club and all the adults around him were congratulating him and telling him they'd never even played there.  "Time is a cigarette burning down off the paint of the jaw of a dying clown..."  At one point a sing-along of "If You Don't Know Me By Now" broke out which was pretty awesome.  "The sun is fallin' in the western sky, wrinkling the twinkle of his eye..." Then Kevin Russell jumped off stage during a keyboard solo and danced with a little boy and I got jealous. 

(All above lyrics are from the Song of Lime Juice & Despair by Shinyribs, although I am not sure if “paint” is correct.  It could be “pate” or “bane” or, with my skill at identifying song lyrics, it could also be, like, “fruit” .)

Shinyribs, in all their glory!

** Watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi.  Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a beautiful and inspiring documentary which will make you crave food that only exists 6,000 miles away.  Jiro, sushi master, dreams of sushi and during the day he makes his dreams come true.  I, the pretend-writer-person, dreamed last night that my cat Toby spoke to me, but this morning he didn’t say a word and I didn’t pressure him.

** Taking my pup on a hike and watching him swim without fear for the first time.  He’s not going to break any speed records.  Or endurance records.  Or distance records.  Or style records.  Or at-least-you-didn’t-fall-down records.  But I am proud of him anyway.  My boy is growing up!

Look at him go!  I'm a proud mama.

So there you have it-- the adventures of a full-time pretend-writer-person on her made-up-not-needed-at-all spring break.  Don’t be jealous.  But tomorrow I am TOTALLY getting back to my pretend work.  I promise.

Pointing Out the Owls

When people ask me if I miss teaching, my gut reaction is to say no.  But that's not really true.  The question I am really answering is do I miss my JOB.  And I do not.  The first things that pop into my mind when I think of my job are the negatives from last year-- the hours of grading and never catching up, the endless meetings, the overload of... everything. I guess the wound is still too fresh.

But of course I do miss teaching.  Teaching was what I loved, and there is evidence that I miss it all over my life.

For instance... 

Lately I've been reading a lot of books about the craft of writing, and-- I can't help myself-- I keep noting in the margins passages that would be good to use in the classroom.  Even when I am the student, studying articles for my own learning, I am still the teacher, wanting to pass that learning on.

Also, I've always loved recommending books to my husband, but now when he needs something new to read, I find myself getting a little carried away.  I thrive on the pleasure of scurrying from bookshelf to bookshelf collecting titles that I think he will enjoy and then presenting them to him.  This is not just a simple, "Honey, I left a couple of books on your nightstand."  No, no, no.  This is a sit-down-give-me-your-full-attention presentation of the books.

"Ok... this is the book I was reading when I kept laughing out loud last month.  Remember?  I think it would make you laugh too.  And this one was kind of weird, but honestly I think you would like it more than I did and I'd love to know your thoughts on the ending.  And this one I haven't read yet, but it's by the same author of that other book you liked.  And THIS one, I know it looks like a girly cover, just don't look at the cover, in fact-- here, I am taking the cover off-- this one is SO GOOD if you just give it a couple of chapters to get going."

The hubby is always so patient/slightly-patronizing/completely-silent during these ordeals.  When I finish, he points and says, "That one," making his choice.  Admittedly, he does not get as excited about these presentations as I do, but he DOES usually like the books.  (You can ask him.) 

Anyway, I know that my passion for supplying Mark with good reading material comes from how much I miss doing the same for students.  I absolutely loved getting the right book into the right hands.

But maybe the most glaring example of my longing for the classroom is in the owls.

Sharing the Owls

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, which is practically in my backyard, is a lovely place to spend an afternoon.  Last spring when I was there on a busy day, a small crowd had gathered at the archway leading into the central square.  The attraction?  In the planter in the corner where the stone walls meet, high above the heads of the visitors and well-protected from wind and weather, a great horned owl nested with her three fuzzy babies. 

I fell in love with them on sight.  I am a sucker for seeing animals of any kind in nature-- rabbits, deer, snakes, lizards, armadillos-- but I really love owls.  I love the screech owls that roost in our big oak tree in the spring and I love hearing the great horned owls hoot to each other behind the house at night, but I rarely ever see one.  And here they were, just fifteen feet above my head, calmly going about their owl business, content to let us gawkers down below point and photograph and ‘ooo’ and ‘ahh’.  A volunteer at the center told me that the mother comes back there every year to nest.  I thought it was so cool.

Mom and Baby - April 9, 2012

Since I live so close, I began walking over there weekly to watch the babies grow.  Sometimes I'd take a book and sit on the bench by the turtle pond and read, snapping a photo now and then or just enjoying the "company" of the owls.  But after that first day, I never saw a big crowd.  See, the thing is, unless you know they're there, the owls are really easy to miss.  It's not like there's a sign or anything.  And the more families that I saw walk past the arch, unaware, the more I wanted to show them the wonderful sight they were missing.  So I did.  

"Have you seen the owl?" 

Over and over again last spring, I pointed out the owls to people who were coming and going from the center.  And this year, now that the mama is back in her nest, I am doing it again.

People are always a little taken aback at first by the stranger woman suddenly accosting them about owls, but after they realize that I am harmless and they see the owl for themselves, they are almost always grateful.  Their eyes light up and they gasp in delight and often they mention how they can't believe they didn't see it before, how they almost missed it. 

And it makes me feel so good.

Baby - April 14, 2012

I’m not doing anything, really.  I’m only showing them something beautiful that was already there.  But it still makes me glow with pride because it reminds me of being in the classroom.   Teaching is like pointing out the owl.  There it is, right there above your head, not even a stretch really to see it, and yet if you don't know one is there, if you are walking, head down, not looking for owls, there is almost no way you can discover it on your own.  You need someone to guide you.

And so, the real answer is yes.  I do miss teaching.  I miss sharing the writing craft with my students.  I miss putting books they'll love into their hands.  And, above all, I miss pointing out the owls.  I miss watching students’ faces light up with the discovery that something so beautiful was right before their eyes and they’d never noticed it before.

Baby - April 18, 2012

 

 

Feeling a Little Batty

This weekend, for the first time in years, I went downtown and watched the bats emerge from the Congress Avenue bridge and swoop into the night in search of dinner.  When I stood down on the lawn, looking up at their silhouettes flitting this way and that against the dusky sky, I felt a sense of relief.  Without realizing it, I had been a little apprehensive about going, worrying that maybe the phenomenon had changed, that the additions of high-rise condos and the ruthlessness of time had somehow ruined it. 

But no.  The bats, and their audience, were just as I remembered them.   Spectators sat beneath the bridge on the grass on blankets they had brought.  Those on the bridge leaned over and pointed and gaped.  Party boats went by below, their guides commenting on the smell of guano and making jokes about how “this is the only bridge where it rains underneath” while the tourists squealed on cue.   There was a man trying to make a buck selling glo-sticks, a couple making out inappropriately and at least one crying child.  All was as it should be.

And the bats—the bats did their majestic dance down the river, rising and falling in one living, breathing cloud, breaking apart briefly and then coming back together, heading east as the sun set behind them.

Although the Congress Avenue bridge is famous for the number of bats that live beneath it, that is not the only place you can find them in Austin.  They make their home in several areas of the city and our neighborhood is one of them.  If we are outside at dusk, we can usually see at least one or two darting around in the sky above us.

So tonight, around 8:45PM, my husband asked me to come out to the front yard because there were a couple of bats flying around and he wanted to prove to me something he’s been telling me for years:  that if you throw a tennis ball up in the air near bats, they will dive bomb it.  It’s not that I didn’t believe him, I just couldn’t picture it.  So we headed out into the street armed with two of our puppy’s tennis balls.

And he was right!  Whenever we tossed the ball high into the air, at least one of the bats would swoop toward it and then veer away again.  They never actually touched the ball, but they came very close to it, as well as to us.  Once the bat even continued to dive bomb the ball after it had bounced and flew right under Mark’s arm as he was catching it.  It was really amazing to watch.

After a few minutes, though, we stopped.  I was worried that maybe we were being mean to the bats and Mark was worried when he saw one of the bats circling above my head for some reason, so we ended the game and went inside.  But I have to admit that it was pretty cool.  If you have bats in your neighborhood, and a tennis ball, and access to a rabies vaccination just in case, I suggest you try it.

Walk

I wrote the following journal entry exactly one year ago, only about a month after I’d moved in with Mark.  It’s crazy how long ago that feels.   

April 28, 2010

I went for a walk tonight.

I was supposed to be doing school work, but I’d been cooped up in my classroom all day long monitoring TAKS, and I’d had a chai latte and it was just a really nice evening and I decided I needed to get out.  Mark chose not to come with me this time, so I set out with just my book, a collection of stories by Naomi Shihab Nye, and nothing else, not even a cell phone.  It was about 8:15PM. 

Taking a walk at this time of night without my phone is not something I ever would have done in Rosedale, but here it feels ok, and it was kind of liberating to get out of touch for a while.  I set off down Snapdragon and turned right on Bluestar, looking at houses and reading the story called “Lending Library” in my book, another tale of a cosmic conversation in a taxi.  (Naomi’s book is making me wish I had more reasons to take public transportation.)

When I got to the corner of Bluestar and Sundrop Valley, I suddenly wished I had brought my phone.  There, on the edge of a bush by the sidewalk was a momma cat and four adorable little kittens, three tabby and one (the littlest one) solid black, probably about six or eight weeks old.  Well, Mark had said no to a walk, but had he ever said no to kittens?  These were so cute—in that stage of toddling around, curious and a little wobbly—and I knew he would want to see them.  So I ran back the few blocks (revealing how truly out of shape I am) and got Mark.  He came back with me and we spent about fifteen minutes watching and playing with the little cats.  They were gentle and not wild.  I held two of them and only got hissed at, half-heartedly, a couple of times.  We’re worried about their safety and about them breeding more strays and considered talking to the owners of the closest house about maybe helping to get them fixed or something, but there was nothing to be done tonight, so we left them alone.  Mark went on home and I continued on my walk.

By then it was much darker and I could only read by street lamp, and there are not that many street lamps in our neighborhood of shady roads and many stars, but I kept trying anyway.  I am a slow reader as it is, someone who likes to stop often and ponder what I have read.  This just gave me more opportunity, often in the middle of a sentence.  Street lamp… “I’m never lonely.  And I’ve only taken a friend along twice.  But I always take books and find more books.  Say, have you read…”  Pause for darkness.  Porch light… “another one of my truly favorite books, Cold Oceans by Jon Turk?”  Darkness again.  Reading the story so slowly like that—a sentence here, a paragraph there—made me enjoy it even more.  It was about a taxi driver who had waited at the airport for Naomi (we are, apparently, on a first name basis now) for three hours when her plane was delayed, but his grumpiness quickly turned to friendliness when they started discussing books and he realized that she was friends with his favorite author.  He told her that Peter Matthiessen’s book The Snow Leopard changed his life, and ever since then he has worked for a year (earning money and living simply) and then explored for a year, and he listed all of the countries he had been to already living life this way.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story, but I enjoyed the spaces between the story (ever-increasing as I walked on streets with fewer lights) just as much if not more.  This neighborhood is definitely different from Rosedale.  The houses are all somewhat similar in that “master planned community” sort of way (I always wonder if the builders of these developments ever get to say in the process, “It’s all part of the master plan…”) and when the lights are on inside and you can see in, the rooms are… different… in a way I can’t describe, but this place certainly has its own individual charm as well, and I was finding it tonight.  The many stars that are visible… Orion, the big dipper, and other, smaller ones, I never saw on Ramsey.  The flowers everywhere, making us true to our name of “Wildflower Park”, specifically that big patch of buttercups at the corner of Hibiscus Valley and Chaska that I actually passed twice tonight when I decided my walk hadn’t been long enough yet.  The peacocks that you can hear kay-hawing out somewhere on the east (?) side of the neighborhood.  The fact that I can walk without my phone if I want to and still feel safe.  (Although I think I’ll start carrying it anyway.  Shady characters or not, I could just as easily trip and fall here as in Rosedale, and besides it is helpful for kitten sightings.)

In the shadows of my walk, while I was pondering the latest words in my book and waiting for the next bit of illumination, I found myself looking at the houses I passed, and feeling those familiar stirrings of envy for the big houses with their second stories and balconies and extra rooms.  Without even meaning to, I started to fantasize about cat rooms and more living space and a separate office and guest room, decorating the imaginary square feet with furniture and, naturally, more books.  When I realized what I was doing, I had to laugh at myself.  Mark and I could move into the biggest house in this neighborhood and have a separate room for every cat if we wanted to, and in the evenings after work, I’d still grab my book and my tea and my laptop and squeeze into the chair by his computer so we could hang out together.  Maybe all that space is overrated after all…

Eventually, I got close enough to the end of my story that I could no longer read it in disjointed segments, and I stopped abruptly and read the last few lines in a circle of light somewhere on Hibiscus Valley.   When I finished, I realized I was standing right in the middle of someone’s driveway and felt a little silly, wondering if they were watching me from inside.  After that, it seemed like the right plan to head home.  I didn’t really want to; I felt like I could walk around all night, enjoying the cool breezes, reading under street lights, and contemplating the idea of taking every other year off to travel the world.  But I had no way of knowing what time it was or if maybe Mark was worrying about me, so I made my way back to Snapdragon Drive.

By the time I arrived home, it was 9:20PM, and I had come to three conclusions.  I’m very happy with my new neighborhood, and I don’t think I would do well with the work-a-year, play-a-year lifestyle, but I think I’ll put The Snow Leopard on my reading list nonetheless.