Barking Mad

The only drawback of living in a tin shed in the middle of the desert, apart from the millions of eye-sucking flies, lurking scorpions, really hideous weird looking giant spiders, giant centipedes, bits of dead horse in the bathroom, the heat, the cold, the dust, the mini tornadoes, the Mippys trying to steal diesel, the...where was I?

Oh, right. The noise. The thing with a tin shed is that even a small twig scraping on the roof sounds like there's an eagle line dancing up there, and you can clearly hear any noise within 500 metres, such as Vincent barking at two in the morning at The Thing That Isn't There. Add this to the fact that Gary suffers from hypersensitive hearing and wakes up six hundred times a night bolt upright going "What the hell was that?" while I could sleep peacefully through a home invasion or nuclear blast ("mmmf? oh snzzzzzz").

So poor Gary hasn't been getting enough sleep because of the BARKING, and yesterday he fell asleep while driving the grader on the Wiluna road and ran off into the bush and over two trees. This isn't as bad as it sounds, because they're out in the middle of nowhere and the trees here aren't big enough to be a problem if you run into them. But I was horrified and made him go to bed right after dinner, and now I'm making a white noise sleep compilation for the iPod so we can put it on at night and mask the sounds of Smokey and the chooks walking on the roof and Vincent woofing at the mysterious activities of The Thing That Isn't There.

The Thing That Isn't There could be a small lizard making tiny noises in the bush, a frog, aboriginals creeping up on the diesel shed, kangaroos, the bungarra, or nothing. But I have faith in Vincent, because he tries so hard in all ways to be a Good Dog, and also his ruff is up and he's staring at Something out there in the dark. We go out with the new super high-powered torch but we can't see a thing. Is it in his mind? Whatever it is, it's driving Gary crazy and haggard, so we're going to try having my compilation of White Noise and Singing Whale Eco Hippy Music on all night and see if that works. If he puts earplugs in all he can hear is his tinnitus, and then lies awake wondering if intruders are hacking away at the walls of the shed and he can't hear them through the ear plugs. We know that if Honey barks, there's someone nearby, but Vincent goes off several times a night out in the compound yard.

My other theory is that the diesel shed is haunted. I get really bad heebie jeebies in there, with a very strong feeling of someone standing behind me, and several times I'm sure I've caught the figure of a man standing next to the shed and stepping behind it - so much so that I've gone and looked around to see who it was. The dogs don't like going to the diesel shed, even though they'll go everywhere else with me. The follow me to about thirty feet away, then stop and sit until I come back. Could it be the Ghost Of The Old Caretaker? or the dead horse? Headless Mr. Rooster? God knows, but I'm happy for it to hang around as long as it doesn't come into the house or pull any "BOO!" crap, because if it does, Gary will shoot it.