This happened a week ago during the lunar eclipse (which was awesome by the way):
It was very dark. I’d turned off my pole light to see the nigh sky better. I was sitting in a lawn chair watching the heavens when the coyotes started howling.
Coyooooote. Yote yote yote. COYOTE!
Our dog was in the house but she heard it. She wasn’t putting up with that shit!
DOG! DOG, DOG, DOG, DOOOOOOOOG!
There was some back and forth.
Yote, yote, yote… coyoooooooote!
DOG! DOOOOOOOG! DOG DOG!
Then an entirely different sound came from far off in the distance. Faint but clear.
Woooooooooooooooooooooooolf.
The coyotes and our dog shut the hell up! There was a period of dead silence.
I’ve never been particularly impressed or unimpressed with wolves but I’m rethinking that. One single solitary distant howl shut everything else down. It was like a police cruiser rolling past a teenager’s party. Instant silence.
It was a beautiful night. The lunar eclipse was very cool. The wolf never howled again. I guess it had made its point. After about 20 minutes the owls started hooting again.
At one point I caught a gleaming view of several dozen bright satellites in flawless precision. A line, flying west to east in the sky. A piece of the Starlink satellite cluster. I was inspired. NASA could perform a lunar landing when I was a toddler. Science fiction and dreams of spaceflight were at their apex when I was too young to know. NASA has spent most of the ensuing half century crawling up it’s risk averse bureaucratic ass. Meanwhile, America and western society cowers in fear, like coyotes who’ve heard a wolf. Yet there it was… a gleaming silent line of human intelligence wrought among the stars. Maybe 50 dots in a perfect formation. A constellation. Just a hint of the 2,400 already up there and the vast grid that will be there in due time. It wasn’t sad, like a McDonalds billboard on the interstate, it was glorious, like a reminder that humans can fly if they wish.
Between the wolves and the lunar eclipse and Starlink, it was a fabulous evening.
Sounds like you had a really nice night of it. In East Texas we had a perfect layer of clouds.
Oh man that sucks. The lunar eclipse wasn’t as amazing as the total solar eclipse a few years ago but it was still pretty cool.
I can relate. I do the same thing on clear nights.
Ohio Guy
Back when you were a toddler, NASA did not think that it’s primary mission was to make Muslims feel good about their prowess in math and science.
I remember when Obama said that in a speech. It was not an inspiring moment for scientific advancement.