Midsummer Madness

Midsummer Madness

It is one of the strangest memories I have. That summer day unraveled as ordinarily as a dropped ball of yarn.  I had gone to town in search of diversion but found none. Even the pub was closed for renovation, so I don’t want to hear ye later blaming me visions from none of the devil’s spirits. Though I will say, that if you told me that me evening meal of brandied pork didn’t have all the alcohol sautéed out of the sauce, I’d be inclined to agree, the later circumstances being so wierd.

After dinner,  with a whole day diddled away, it was time to cross this date off the calendar and put me self to bed.  I wasn’t really so tired but I thought perhaps me boredom would bring on the sirens of sleep. Little did I know.

Perky little Poinciana, me Maltese companion, faithfully followed me and me evening tea upstairs to bedchamber. Her dainty dexterity never failed to amaze me as she launched herself unaided to her spot on the coverlet. Sitting me tea on the bedstand, I wrapped me self up and set upon business at hand. How did “Wee Willie” say it:  “To sleep, perchance to dream?”  It was not to be.

Twas a night of full moon.  The night curtains were ner drawn, and the erie light shown on the wall making patterns easily construed as dancing things of the night.  I hoped the lights would help lull me, but, alas, they had opposite effect and I could not drift off. This went on for hours. Tossing for position, turning to find better comfort. Time passed as a slug crawling across Hydrangea stem. 

“This boring day simply will not dismantle,” I mumbled. But me grouse was no sooner uttered when I heard sounds from outside.  There was a hum, a crackling and some flashes; like heat lightening.  Strange, but I was adamant in not getting out of me casket of malingering malaise.  The ruckus subsided.  Still, no sleep.

There came a melodic sound. Like a string instrument.  Like a guitar?  No, more like a violin but not so lilting. I really don’t know for sure. It was very late and me senses were befuddled.  It perdured.

I rose from me repose, drew up the sash, and peered out me window. 

Glowing In the garish moonlight, some strange alien craft was in the middle of me croquet lawn, sitting there like some upturned birdbath of enormous proportion.  From one side protruded what appeared a staircase or ramp that I can only relate to you as resembling a soup ladle or curved spoon. Beside this craft and its small circular spot, charred from whatever propulsion had brought it to my backspace, was a rather ethereal creature of feline features, only larger and bereft of any fur, at least that I could tell in shadowy moonlight.

The creature did not see me, but was involved holding some appliance from which this haunting “music” was coming from. It ambled delicately about on two pods as though searching for something, with these almost melodic sounds wafting up through me window.

Poinciana was alert and these dulcet tones were as beguiling to her as to me self.  I smiled in bewilderment. She, jumping up onto the window seat began a staccato bark/chirp as she is want to do when she is amused and happy. If a dog can laugh, that’s what it will sound like. And laugh she did.

The alien creature immediately took notice, and startled. The “music” stopped and it turned and ran up the ramp-spoon into the dish. The spoon silently retracted.

With more crackling hums and flashes the craft rose, almost lurching, up, up into the sky .  It hovered over me neighbors pasture. A green light (a ray?) shown from below this alien vehicle spotlighted his best milker cow, and she was drawn; no levitated; up into a gaping hole in the craft bottom. And then, aperture closed after her, now inside the vessel.

Then, without further hesitation, the dish thing departed, in starts, vaulting up into the sky and over an omniscient moon as Poinciana happy-barked it adieu.

Whew...I have kept this to meself all these years so as not to be called the village idiot.  I have professed ignorance to the total disappearance of me neighbor’s cow and have tried many times to rationalize this whole happenstance as daydreaming or some illusion due to summer night vapors.

I do, however, keep one little snippet of dalliance ,  scratched down upon a vellum sheet and pieced in between pages of “Chaucer’s Tales”  so that if one should come upon it after me demise, they, like I ,can eternally wonder just what this event was, or if it even ever happened at all...

Hey diddle diddle,

The Cat and the fiddle,
The Cow jumped over the moon.

The little Dog laughed,to see such sport,

And the Dish ran away with the Spoon.^[