Fright night

Cast - 14 y.o Son and 18 y.o Daughter

Moving from a city to regional Tasmania has been a huge 'comfort zone' change for my two older children.  Used to a hectic lifestyle involving public transport, shopping centres, freeways, movies, and road rage; it has now been replaced with cows, electric fencing, chooks and dirt-tracks posing as roads.  The most difficult thing for the kids to have to adapt to is the noises on the farm at night.


Much to the possible disgust of my two kids, I am going to reveal a couple of incidents that occurred during our first week in our new house (wow, that was 2 months ago already!!!).  Both kids got up one morning looking absolutely exhausted.  When I enquired how they were sleeping, they both replied that they weren't because it was too noisy at night!  I thought living within earshot of a freeway and the train station was bad, but 14y.o said that those noises were nothing compared to what he had heard and how scared he had been that night!

Apparently, 14y.o had slept with one of his windows open (this window is a large one, that runs above and along his bed).  During the night he was awakened by a strange 'breathing' noise at his window! Now this window is about 5 meters above the ground on the outside, so there was something up on the sill.  I said it was probably a possum, and 14y.o agreed, so I asked why he was then so scared?  'Mum!!!!', he answered, 'there was only the flyscreen between me and it, and they are rabid'.  He then revealed that he lay petrified under his doona (all 6ft of him!), sweating quietly but profusely for hours, cramped in position, so that he wouldn't agitate the possum into possible attack mode.  I had to laugh, and asked what the possum could have possibly done?  'Mum!!!!', with the same tone of exasperation and rolling eyes; 'it could have come through the flyscreen and CLAWED at me!!'.

Then Daughter, fully sympathetic (rather than usually sarcastic) with her brother's story, tells me that she heard crunching noises on the gravel outside her room.  Again, I said that it was just possums - I mean what person in stealth mode is going to give themselves away lurking outside bedroom windows on gravel instead of walking on the grass?  Daughter says that it wasn't a possum, as she heard someone cough.  SO now we have a not-so-stealthy (possible) perpetrator with a slight cold??  It was only a week later that the (un)stealthy possum was found to be the 'cough' cause, and was helping himself to a light cat biscuit supper in the laundry room!  Poor city kids!