I was sitting at my computer this morning when I heard a terrible racket outside being made by what sounded like a Hitchcock movie: The Birds.
In truth it was some apparently very angry birds. I had seen mockingbirds in this type of mood before and glanced around.
Aha! Sure enough. It was my friendly neighborhood cat - Blackie Detroit. (Explanation: When he first showed up, frightened and wary of me, I slowly befriended him and
named him Blackie. Later one of our neighbors and I had a conversation about him and she said she called him "Detroit". Hence his strange compound name.)
At any rate, he was just making a slow reconnoiter of our backyard, seemingly unconcerned about the noisy birds who would occasionally dive-bomb him. But I suspect he was more cunning than he appeared.
Eventually, he went under the fence and disappeared. But still I heard the birds in "high dudgeon". I later looked over the fence and found Blackie Detroit casually reclining on another neighbor's picnic table, just waiting for one of those noisy birds to get within claws reach, I suspect.
At this point, he has moved on again, as have the birds. The outcome is yet to be decided.
It makes me think of Sherlock Holmes adventures on the moors of the British Isles. For instance, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles". One expects to hear the mournful howl of a great hound echoing though the night and sending a tremor of fear through my body.
It is a night made for murder most foul. I can nearly feel the cold dampness penetrating my body under my greatcoat.
