Before there was Internet, there were ghosts in them hills.

I came home tonight after dinner with some friends to find Tyler on the deck smoking a long-awaited cigar. He told me about a ghostly-sounding creature he had been listening to in the wooded hills behind our house. We live out a little ways in the country, and we see deer and turkeys pretty regularly, and Scratchy (pictured right) has made friends with a very ugly herd of possums with whom he shares his cat food.

But this creature was no possum. Tyler described the sound it made and then told me about how the creature had come right up to the split rail fence below the deck and shrieked, and all the neighborhood dogs went nuts, and Scratchy wanted to go in the house. As a point of information, Scratchy is fierce and not easily frightened. He stares down the Doberman from up the road on a fairly regular basis.

I was a little creeped out and worried that a mountain lion might be stalking us or something. Except normally when animals stalk you, they don't shriek. So, I got on the trusty internet and found two animals that make shrieking noises and live in rural North Carolina: pumas and red foxes. And apparently, pumas don't often shriek, but female red foxes do it a lot during mating season.

So, then, I found this on YouTube, and Tyler confirmed that was the sound he heard. Scary scary. And it's back. I just went outside with him and heard it. Good thing we have Internet, or we'd be sitting by the door with a shotgun...