Night sounds

[Riverpirate]

I was camping at a state park one time and the couple next to me in a pop-up went at it for hours. The next morning they were like "good morning. how did you sleep?". I just did not know what to say. I mean it is not like in a motel room where there is an insulated wall between you. From the camp site next door 10' away, you might as well be in the pop-up with them. I was scary too. There was one time I thought he was killing her, then she was killing him, then he killed her some more. It was terrible.

[Dave10]

Screech owl. It sound like a girl is screaming bloody murder. Pretty sketchy

[Reeper]

Had wild hog walk by my hammock........scare the crap out me........lol

[Danalex]

Sometimes I pity those poor city folk who never come out and enjoy the wonderful (scary, eerie, screechy, etc, etc,) sounds of nature.

I use earplugs all the time ... what I can't hear can't hurt me

[Dave10]

I use earplugs all the time ... what I can't hear can't hurt me

So so true

[Porloff94]

In my back yard, raccoon brawl about 20 feet from my head. Woke me out of a dead sleep, and that's no easy task.

[Chard]

I had a funny experience during this fall's Algonquin Hammock hang here oin Ontario (BTW, if you're interested, see the full trip report here or on my signature below).

Now before you read this, bear in mind that at the time, we were in the middle of moose rutting season when the bull moose can be trouble... Here's the relevant exerpt...

In the middle of the night I awoke with a start. It was pitch black outside. Snap!! Snap, snap. SNAP!! I could distinctly hear the sound of branches breaking not too far behind my head, close to where I knew Bubba and [o]TTer lay sleeping. My heart started beating hard in my chest. Snap!! It sounded like something large was moving through the trees not more than thirty yards away. My first thoughts were that it was either a bear or a moose. Bear? No, too noisy. Moose? Probably. Okay, cow or bull? My first worry was that the moose might not see my black tarp in the dark and stumble into it by mistake, and destroying the silnylon tarp in the process. My second worry was that it was a bull moose and anything that I might do would piss him off.

The snapping continued and now I pondered the best course of action. Do I turn on my headlamp? Do I talk quietly and make my presence known. For all I knew, either course of action was all but guaranteed to bring a furious bull moose my way. In the end I reached down and slowly unzipped my netting. The last thing I wanted to have happen was to be trapped in a zipped hammock as a surprised and angry moose played "trample the burrito" with my head. I checked my watch and it was 2am. The thermometer read just above freezing. Meanwhile, the snapping continued, but more quietly now, as if the source was moving away. My heart rate slowed back to normal. I tried to relax and go back to sleep, but something was wrong. I thought I started seeing dim light dancing across my tarp. The northern lights!! What were the chances of having both moose and the aurora borealis in my campsite on one night??? Not very likely. Reaching out of my hammock, I pulled back the end of my tarp and peeked outside. From the direction of the main campsite clearing, near the firepit, came an orange glow that danced on the trees all around. As if almost on cue, I saw the clear white of a headlamp and in an instant everything fell into place. Wolvaroo had started a fire.

My train of logic was more like an old railway hand cart, but this was how it went. Conditions? Cold and windy. Temperature? Just above freezing. Fire? Someone was freezing and needed to warm up. That left who? Nearby lay eight winter tested hangers and one rookie on his first trip. Yup, Wolvaroo had started a fire, and all of the snapping I had heard was him getting it started. Sometimes you just have to laugh.