Need a giggle? Here’s a midnight SLO County mystery with a feathery surprise
We need genuine laughter so much now, but it can be tough to find in today’s frequently mean, topsy-turvy world.
Occasionally, I’ll trip over a fun and funny video clip online that makes me smile or even giggle, which is very refreshing.
Not as regenerative as a belly laugh, but it helps.
I think the best comedy is often situational, maybe a bit slapstick, but never cruel or mean.
For me, nasty comedy at someone else’s expense just “‘tain’t funny, McGee.”
I miss classic comedian and pianist Victor Borge. When I’d see one of his schticks, especially in person, the cumulative laughter was side splittingly, “my cheeks hurt, but I can’t stop” wonderful.
Every time he fell off his piano bench, I’d know it was coming, but I’d roar with laughter anyway. And his “phonetic punctuation” bit? Hysterical.
Experts say hilarity is very good for our health
After all, as the headline on a Mayo Clinic piece about health management says, “Stress relief from laughter? It’s no joke.”
So, when one of my bonus sisters shared her recent experience with me, I both loved and benefited from it.
Thanks, Sis. (She wants to remain anonymous, because, she says, “I’m shy.” So, I’ll just call her Sis.)
“I was in bed, right at the edge of going to sleep. My cat Mochi was sleeping at the bottom of my bed, as he usually does,” Sis said.
“All of a sudden, there were very loud noises above or on my roof. The window shook!” Sis said. “I sat right up in bed, clutching my blanket around me. I was terrified.”
Mochi, too, was disturbed by the disturbance.
“He sat bolt upright, stayed very still and with wide eyes, glared at the ceiling,” she said. “I could almost hear him thinking, ‘What … was … that?!?’”
Then the noises stopped.
“We sat there waiting for a few minutes, but it didn’t happen again,” Sis said.
Eventually, both she and Mochi relaxed enough to go back to sleep, although he went out like a light, and Sis did not. She kept wondering and worrying about what on earth had happened, was it dangerous and could there be a rerun.
What had it been?
Maybe a large animal had landed on the roof and then left quickly?
Earthquake? NOAA’s quake-monitor website didn’t show any shakers here.
Nobody had posted on social media about the loud noise.
It wasn’t a Vandenberg launch.
It sure as heck wasn’t Superman, new or otherwise.
What WAS it?
So many puzzling possibilities.
Once Sis actually did drift off to sleep, she dreamt over and over again about what might have happened.
It was not a restful night.
After she got up to start her next day, Sis stretched and wandered over to peer down out of her second-story window, she said.
She never could have guessed what happened next
“There were at least 20 or 30 turkeys in the yard, pecking away to find their breakfast,” she said, laughing about the highly unusual sight for that usually turkey-free neighborhood.
The noise!
“We figured all those big birds must have been roosting overnight in the trees nearby when somebody or something really frightened them, and they all flew away at once,” she said.
Yes, wild turkeys can fly short distances and often do so to roost in trees, a sight seen often in Cambria.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife says “turkeys can clock 18 miles per hour on foot and up to 50 miles per hour in flight.”
That night, the sound of all those big wings flapping in fright as the turkeys made their speedy, synchronized exit must have been what awakened and terrified Sis and Mochi, she surmised.
She hopes to never hear that sound again, especially right before bedtime.
But Sis’s real-life skit wasn’t done with her yet
While she gazed in wonder down at her unexpected avian ballet troupe, she felt something brush against her arm.
EEEEeeek!
Was it a spider or something worse?
Had an errant feathered not-a-friend gotten inside?
Understandably, she jumped. Her blood pressure rose, her cortisol levels went sky-high, and her fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. Again.
Of course, Sis spun her head around to see what/who her potential attacker had been.
Oh.
It was Mochi.
It’s to Sis’s credit that she didn’t fling that cat all the way to Cayucos.
He had sidled up beside her unseen and put his front feet on the windowsill, so he could observe for himself what had caught her rapt attention.
In the process, Mochi’s soft facial fur and whiskers had brushed against his mom.
Having had cats, I can so see — and feel — that happening.
“Mochi’s eyes got very big again,” Sis said, so she couldn’t stay mad at him. “Usually when he sees a bird, I imagine him thinking ‘lunch.’ This time, I’ll bet he was plotting his escape.”
Weeks later, Sis can laugh about it. And while I sympathized mightily with her experience, so could I. For quite a long time.
It certainly felt good.
After all, if laughter is good for the soul and our health, shared laughter must be at least 1,000 times better.
Thanks, Sis. I’m still laughing.
