The Monk's Smorgasbord

For anyone thinking that mine is a house of peace and harmony, this will serve to enlighten you. It is not. I guess it was once upon a time, but as we all know—things change.

There are frequent nocturnal disturbances in our home that not only disturb my sleep but also threaten my sanity. I am not talking about the policemen chasing bad guys through our back hedge with dogs—as they have before—nor the drunken and disorderly teens tumbling in at 4 a.m. Rather I am referring to the strange sounds emitted by my own bedfellow, Mr. Precious. Over the 25+ years I have spent living, (and trying to sleep) with him, I have come to recognize and affectionately label the various noises that he emits nocturnally.

The first most recognizable and consistent of these special night sounds is one that I refer to simply as The Drowning Cat. The first time I awoke to this one, I sincerely thought, in my half-asleep state, that there was a cat of considerable size drowning in a rain barrel outside my window. I don’t actually have a rain barrel outside my window but the guttural gasps, watery gurglings and high-pitched mews convinced me that I did—and that a cat had fallen into it. I jumped out of bed (my nakedness glimmering palely in the moonlight), ran to the window and peered out, only to realize that the sound was NOT coming from outside but was being produced by Mr. Precious next to me.

The second special but somewhat less reliable collection of auditory delights is what I lovingly refer to as The Monk’s Smorgasboard. The Monk’s Smorgasboard is a spectacular array of sounds straight out of an Umberto Eco novel. Imagine 24 monks, seated on each side of a long trestle table. Roasted wild boars and jugs of wine arrive and are placed in front of them. Suddenly there erupts a violent knashing of teeth, the tearing of flesh from bones, violent chewings, followed by gulping, swilling and swallowing of large mouthfuls of wine. And, if you listen carefully, just below the surface, you can detect the low rhythmic moaning of a Gregorian chant. That’s the Monk’s Smorgasbord and that’s what Mr. Precious sounds like at 3 a.m.

There is a third and pretty common one--The Caucasian Bubble Torture (kinda like Chinese Water Torture) but I won't go into detail--you can probably take a good guess at what it sounds like and the difficulties it creates.

But last night in the dead of night I woke with a start to a cacophony of yelps, yips, growls and short piggish snorts. I lay in the dark, fuming that Mr. Precious had indeed sunk to new and lower depths in his repertoire. HOWWWWWW, I howled to myself, clenching the sheets in my fists HOW.DOES. HE. DO. THAT. I finally rolled over to heave him onto his side and hopefully extinguish the sounds, at least momentarily, when Mr. Precious said very clearly in his own very awake voice."Do you hear that?"

I sat bolt upright. I listened. The nasty snorting continued. This time it wasn’t Mr. Precious at all! I got up and stepped out onto the back deck just in time to see a massive mother coon and her numerous baby coons scuttling off into the bushes.