What’s that saying about the darkest hour being the one just before the dawn? In hindsight, last week turned out rather dark, when the mundane pressures of a modern Monday required that I be up and about long before first light. So it was still black as pitch outside as I sat on the porch steps, listening to night noises while waiting for the kettle to boil. Having spent seventeen years living in this creaky old country house, my wife and I are no strangers to things that go ‘bump’ in the night. Most of the bumps, burps, croaks, chirps, scuffles, scratches, hoots and howls of a Louisiana nighttime are familiar to us these days, and trying to identify the critters that make them is an entertaining pastime. So I was surprised, that Monday morning, to hear something I’ve never before heard in all the years of living out here—a Whippoorwill.
Have you ever heard a whippoorwill call? You’ll remember if you have. Floating out of the darkness, a whippoorwill’s high, ethereal cry seems the very distillation of loneliness and loss—up there with the calls of barred owls and coyote packs in the classic creepy night noises department. Listening to this one, which sounded as if it must have been sitting in the live oak in the backyard, it was easy to understand why the whippoorwill has a special place in American folklore. Native American stories hold that a whippoorwill’s song is a death omen; another early folk legend suggests that the bird is a harbinger of death that can sense a soul departing, and sings to capture it as it leaves. I didn’t know any of this at the time—I learned it all the following day after posting about hearing the bird on Facebook. And not being especially superstitious, I suppose I would have forgotten all about the whippoorwill’s visit soon enough had we not discovered our faithful old German shepherd dead beneath an azalea bush three days after hearing its mournful song.
Poor old Bertie. A Katrina dog who came to live with us when her New Orleans owners moved out of state, Bertie was a big, goofy, affectionate companion who adored kids and ponds and trips to the creek, hated thunder and baths, and consequently smelled like Satan’s underpants. Part German shepherd/part hippo, Bertie chose to spend most of her time wallowing in the muddy shallows of a catfish pond—which guaranteed her “outside dog” status—or patrolling the woods and fields around us, which is why she wasn’t immediately missed. So it was a sad day, and an unsettling one given its proximity to the whippoorwill’s visit three days beforehand, when we discovered her.
How to put this delicately? Even taking into account that Bertie had not in life been the most pleasant-smelling dog, it wasn’t by sight that we were led to her place of demise. Suffice it to say that the ‘dust to dust’ part of her final journey was well underway by the time we found her, so the business of preparing a suitable last resting place for a beloved, faithful, and extremely large German shepherd was far more important than arguing about whether her passing had really coincided with the whippoorwill’s pre-dawn funeral dirge. Anyone with kids knows how hard they take the passing of a pet, and ours collected garlands of wildflowers then stood a forlorn vigil for hours while I toiled with pick and shovel to carve a fitting grave into the unyielding Feliciana clay. It was well after nightfall by the time the grave was judged deep enough and we were ready to return Bertie to the earth. Our small family must have made for a strange sight, with Mathilde in her Hello Kitty pajamas playing a shaky adagio on her violin by lantern light while Charles tearfully festooned Bertie’s gravesite with handfuls of gladiolus blooms and I mounded soil back into the hole. Now Bertie’s grave certainly dominates the little pet cemetery that has become the last resting place for seventeen years’ worth of faithful dogs, cats, chickens, and other dearly departed domesticated animals. She is missed—our other dogs certainly seem to mourn her—and I hope it won’t be long before another shepherd puppy comes to join the family fold.
As for the whippoorwill? They’re not common in Louisiana and according to our Bird of the Month columnist Harriett Pooler this one was probably just migrating through when it chose to park itself in our backyard and sing its mournful song. And it can just keep on migrating. Because if there’s any truth to the old myths about departing souls, the whippoorwill’s is a song we can do without. For eerie nightime noises, I’ll take a pack of howling coyotes anytime.
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