We have a motion detector light in our backyard that comes on, hopefully, when motion is detected. It is mostly activated by squirrels and raccoons, but as the days are growing shorter, our dogs also make the light come on as they race around the yard in hot pursuit of those squirrels and raccoons.
I like that motion detector light because there is something about these shorter days that makes dark evenings feel even darker. Sometimes when I’m sitting in our family room and the wind is blowing and our backyard looks like something out of a horror movie (to be fair, it looks even more horrific during the day when all the doggie-related destruction is visible), I have a sudden fear I’m going to hear supernatural tapping on a window followed by Freddy Krueger lunging through the kitchen door.
It’s always a relief when the motion detector light comes on and I can see that the only creature in our backyard is a raccoon peacefully drinking from the birdbath.
There’s a reason our bodies were designed to sleep while it’s dark, and I suspect part of that reason is the completely human fear of things that go bump in the night.
We recently went out of town for a couple of days and decided to return home at 2 a.m., mainly because the hotel we were staying at apparently replaced all of its regular mattresses with ones made of cement and also because my husband likes driving at night.
Night drives seem to go so much faster than driving during the day since there is nothing to look at other than tensely scanning the sides of the road for deer also on a night run.
But driving at night is spookier than daytime driving. During the day you can look at fall colors, billboards and the towns you’re passing while you imagine what it would be like to live in Mukwonago, Wisconsin, or Beach Park, Illinois.
At night all you care about is getting to the next gas station for more coffee and sugar to help you stay awake. An added plus: Some people believe calories don’t count in the dark, so it is completely fine to eat all the maple-frosted doughnuts you want.
A minus is that those gas station stops at 3 a.m. often come with other, shall we say, extremely animated customers who are either on their way home from a night of partying or should be on their way home. For safety’s sake, night drives require stopping only at well-lit gas stations with a lot of cars in the parking lot.
The best part of driving home in the dark is when dawn breaks and the world becomes light again. Say what you want about only babies being afraid of the dark, but it’s a mighty fine feeling when the sun comes up in the morning.
We arrived home without any suicidal deer throwing themselves in front of our car and took a well-earned nap to celebrate. Traveling is fun, but nothing beats crawling into your own bed and sinking down into a soft mattress.
Daylight savings time will soon come to an end and the nights will be even longer. The motion detector light will be switching on more often, giving us a glimpse of what is really going on in the backyard and reassuring us that it isn’t Freddy Krueger, at least not this time.
When our oldest son entered kindergarten, he had to take a test based on logic and was asked, “What do you do when you enter a dark room?” The answer they were looking for was “turn on a light.” Instead, Joe said, “Tell my mom,” a perfectly logical response in my opinion.
So when entering a dark room, it never hurts to ask your mom to turn on the light for you and if she’s around, I’m sure she’ll be glad to help.
Nell Musolf is a free lance writer who lives in Mankato.