Noise

As my dad and I were out walking yesterday morning, he said something about how wrong people are to assume that living out in the country would be quiet. I hadn't really been paying attention to the noise around me before that, but I perked up and started listening. It is loud! There might not be the sounds of steady streams of cars rushing past, horns blowing, and people yelling, but there are roosters crowing, dogs barking at the crowing roosters, birds chirping, frogs croaking, crickets...cricketing.

This morning as we set out, I started listening again. You can hear roosters coming from every direction. I would like to see a map pointing out every house with chickens within a 5 mile radius. I bet there would be a big circle right around our house. Imagine the Ring of Fire, only the Pacific plate is my yard, and the volcanoes are chickens. (Now there's an interesting mental image...)

In addition to the usual critters this morning, we also heard our friendly, neighborhood lion. The Mobile Zoo is right down the road, and every so often, I suppose when it's feeding time, you can hear, or rather feel, the lion roar. It's kind of like the bass at a concert, only in my front yard at 5 am.

Anyway, I suppose if you truly want quiet, even living in the middle of nowhere won't always do the trick. Life just has a way of being noisy. My advice to those in pursuit of silence: find a library.