Rolo began a barking fit at three o’clock this morning. I awoke with a start to his territorial growls and woofs, and sensed that he wasn’t just making noise for the sake of being an annoying little yapper…there was something outside he was trying to warn us about. I got out of bed and Rolo ran out on the deck, barking so loud and hard that it sounded like he was going to pop a vein in his jugular. Then Steve got out of bed, too, to look around and see if Rolo’s alarm was justified or not. All of the lights in the house were off, so it was pitch black, and Steve peered out of our bedroom window with a little flashlight. I asked, “What do you see?”

He was eerily silent.

No response.

I hissed, “STEVE! What is it?!”

He paused, then breathed, “I think it’s a murder.”

My heart stopped. A murder. I envisioned a bloody corpse on our front lawn, and the culprit tip-toeing around our house trying to find an entrance so he can come in and slaughter us, the unfortunate witnesses.

By this time, Steve had moved down to his office, at the end of the hall, to look out his window there. My every vein was coursing with adrenaline as I went to meet him there, and as I walked down the hallway I wondered if I should have been doing an army crawl, instead of walking upright, in case the murderer fired a gunshot into our house. My eyes wide with fear, I whipsered to Steve, “Should we call someone? 911?”

“What do you mean?! There’s a MURDERER lurking in our bushes! Go get a baseball bat or something!”

“A murderer?” He scoffed. “I said I thought that there was a BIRD outside.”

I processed this statement. Murderer…Bird…the first syllables rhyme.

I am a loser.

Steve laughed, and went outside to further investigate. It turns out there was a big raccoon padding across our lawn, and that’s what had Rolo freaking out. A stupid raccoon.

It took me a long time to fall back asleep after that. I just laid in bed, thinking about how scared I had been, and also about how I have become my mother.