An Almost Actual Adventure: The Mystery of the Midnight Growl.

by Keith Barber. Nonfiction (mostly).

I was awakened from my sound sleep. It was no voluntary awakening, thousands of years of evolution compelled me alert. I heard a low, deep growl, atypical from little dog, “Oodle,” a 13 pound Schnoodle. This was the primal growl. The one humans have been conditioned since our Schnoodles were wolves to know means either dire warning or grave danger.

As I struggled to consciousness the growl reverbed through the small room again, confirming this had been no dream. The threat was real. I sat up in the bed my groggy senses struggling alert.

What could have so alarmed my canine companion? What danger was in our room? Could it be a scorpion? A rat? A snake? An anal probing gray extraterrestrial?

I sat listening with every fiber of my being. I wondered if my overly domesticated, floppy eared, nubbly tailed, fluffy, miniature wolf was growling near the door. Perhaps the threat was outside? Perhaps I was still safe behind our locked door.

Again came the deep disturbing growl, sending chills down my now erect spine. It was not at the door. In the dark it was somewhere very near. My panicked eyes darted to scan about the bed, but no white dog was seen. Where could she be? There was only one thing to do. Wait for . . .

The growl came again, sounding much closer than I had realized, and strangely a bit less sinister. It was on the bed. Why would Oodle be growling on the bed? The sense of danger began to convert to confusion.

Another “growl” resolved it all. It was not growl at all, but my wife, Brenda, snoring. I sat listening to its rhythmic pulse, fascinated by how much like the fearsome growl I originally perceived it to be it sounded. It made me wonder, how many ghost stories began with a snoring spouse.

Oodle was sound asleep in her own bed at the foot of ours.

I did not wake Brenda to tell her this story. I crawled back beneath my sheets knowing that to do so would be to invite true danger.

Thus this almost actual adventure ends. May all your most dangerous adventures be almost adventures.