Territory Dispute

I had a nice blog post ready to go about the blogger meet up I went to, the niceties of female friendship, make new friends and keep the old Girl Scout songs and whatnot, but something much more pressing has come to light.

Folks, we've got ourselves a situation on our hands.


No No, that's not right. I said A situation, not The Situation. (This is the second Jersey Shore reference I've made in the past two weeks, perhaps I miss those overly tanned, over sexed, under dressed guidos and guidettes more than I initially realized?)

We are currently waging a war with a nocturnal assailant in our backyard. One of our first nights here, we were awoken in the middle of the night by the.scariest.noises.ever. It sounded like a group of hyenas were conducting a sacrificial orgy with baboons and dying cats outside our bedroom window. (you're just going to have to trust me on this one, I'm an expert in hyena/baboon/dying cat orgies okay?!) It went on for about 5 minutes and then stopped. After we recovered and changed the bedsheets, (I told you, it was a really scary noise), we went back to sleep and tried to forget about it. But this past week, those same noises have woken us up every single night, and every night they are as equally terrifying and awful to listen to.

It has become a topic of much heated debate and discussion in the Griffin/Evans household over the past few days. Was it a bird? ferret? a sexual assault of neighborhood cats by some evil force? We couldn't be certain, but every morning we woke up and looked out the window, sure we'd find some bloody battle scene laid out before us, only to be disappointed. (Now I know that sounds a bit twisted and creepy, but if you heard these noises night after night, you'd at the very least want some evidence to prove to yourself you're not actually just going crazy) We debated about talking to our neighbors about it, but seeing as we don't know any of them yet we didn't think that'd be the best idea. I can only imagine:

Us: Hi, we are your new neighbors. We wanted to talk to you about the gang rape and/or mass murder noises that are occurring outside our flat. What are your thoughts on the subject? We are dying to figure out what it is.

Neighbors: What the hell is wrong with you bloody Americans?!

Nonetheless, I am happy to report that we gained some ground on the battlefield last night. Once again, 4:30am rolled around and the noises were in full effect. Sean jumped out of bed and grabbed the camera before I had even cracked an eyelid. He opened the window and zoomed the lens in and began hitting the flash at any movement or sounds he heard outside. He also thought it would be helpful to very calmly state "Hey, stop" while taking the pictures, as if by him asking nicely, whatever it was would just stop what it was doing and pose politely for the camera. It was as if he were asking the culprit to stop by for a game of chess and a cup of tea instead of scare it off our property.

After a few more rounds of "Guess the Creepy Animal Rape Sound?", we had a victory! Thanks to our amazing camera and Sean's keen ability to see in the dark, we managed to capture this little darling.


(and by capture, I mean by photograph only. God what I would do to capture this thing in real life. I think I might stay awake tonight and just start throwing rocks at it from my 3rd story window. Oh and PETA, don't even try to complain to me about animal cruelty. I am going to catch this thing, kill it, and wear it as this season's mink coat. Pshhhh try me.)

Getting this on photo was step 1 of our victory...but we still had some investigative work to complete. Over breakfast we concluded it was indeed a fox and that was when the real fun began via Google. Google searching is right up there with one of my favorite things to do besides drink tequila and watch reality television (sometimes I even like to do all 3 at once!). This one though, this one was a mystery. I knew I couldn't type "rape sounding fox" into my search terms box. However, I did use the following:
- screaming fox in UK
- screeching fox
- scary fox noises at night
- fox territory disputes (point of interest, the #2 search result on this one was an article about President Clinton and China?)

My initial search brought me to a forum where people were complaining about animal noises at night. First of all, I can't believe such a forum even exists? Oddly enough, I was somewhat comforted by this fact. This meant that Sean and I aren't completely crazy (when it comes to scary noises at night at least). I was scrolling, scrolling, scrolling when I came across this gem and I knew I'd found the right place.
If you had ever been roused from sleep by a sound so unearthly that you expected to see at least a pile of mutilated bodies left under your window - you would know it wasn't cats. Pretty tame by comparison. (source)

* ding! * ding! * ding! * Ladies and Gentleman, we have a winner!!!!! So Sean and I AREN'T totally delusional psychos who hear these noises and immediately associate them with horrifying mental images. whew. I was starting to get a bit worried there for a minute.

Upon further investigation, I was even led to a website dedicated to fox noises. Yes, you read that correctly. There is an entire website of recorded sounds that foxes make. They are even labeled nicely with terms like "Kits at Play" and "Mating Season". We spent some time listening to each noise trying to figure ours out. Within a second of it starting, my stomach started to churn and I knew we'd found our cuplrit: "Adult Disputes". <-click on that to hear the actual noises, but don't say I didn't warn you

Adult Disputes, eh? Well, that is certainly a PC and kind mannered way to describe what happens outside our window in the middle of the night. I don't really know what they are disputing out there, whose turn it is to do the laundry and take out the garbage? But if it's a territory dispute, these foxes have got another thing coming because they aren't going to win this battle.



See this, foxes. This is a lease. That means we own this territory. (Okay, we don't own it, but we do rent it for an astronomically unreasonable price). So that means move along to greener pastures, guys. Go conjure up images of kamikaze animal murderers in someone else's neighborhood.

or else be prepared for a whole new dispute. I'll be sure to record the sounds and post it on the Fox Forest website, labeled as "Marie Kicking Fox Ass".

The end.