Well Amigos, The Red Man has a frightening tale for you, and he does mean s-c-a-r-y. Hang on to your Twilight Zones.

So moments ago at 3:10 a.m. in the dead of night at Casa de Canterbury, The Red Man woke up and managed to get out of his bed with just the right amount of fanfare to wake the old woman Slow who then got out of her bed to walk down the stairs with me to take me out for my usual evening constitutional (or potty time for those who prefer the term). It’s our routine except it wasn’t routine at all for us tonight. This night something was very different…

As we walked past Chelsea who was sleeping in her regular spot on the sofa downstairs in the living room and made our way to the back kitchen door, Slow and I heard this LOUD roaring noise like the old mosquito spraying trucks used to make in the middle of the night when they drove slowly through the neighborhood to spew poison in the air to kill the mosquitoes. Apparently it also killed other things like people, too, so the city abandoned that practice. That’s neither here nor there. What’s important is that the NOISE was LOUD.

We walked outside and looked around the streets and didn’t see anything.

Then Slow looked up because she figured out the noise was coming from ABOVE us instead of AROUND us so it must be a plane or helicopter or something like that. I saw her walking back and forth on the brick path in our back yard with her head cocked skyward, but I took that opportunity to pee. Never miss an opportunity to pee.

Then the old woman stopped dead in her tracks and gawked at the sky. Well naturally, The Red Man stared, too, because I swear the noise kept getting LOUDER and CLOSER. Sweet Lady Gaga.

The next thing I knew I had seen the Green Weenie up there hovering in the sky just high enough for me to know it was definitely as high as a low-flying helicopter but I couldn’t see anything except two red lights at one end of a tube-shaped flying weenie and one green light at the other end of the mysterious machine. It freaked me out. The Red Man won’t lie. It freaked me out.

I stood next to Slow, and we watched it just hovering over us making this god-awful noise and blinking those two red lights and one green light. Every once in a while it would shoot a white light like a police helicopter in a direction away from us. Then, nothing but the noise and the two red lights and one green light.

If  the noise hadn’t been so LOUD, I could have almost sworn it was this great big gigantic kite – it looked like it was suspended in the air like kites are when the wind catches them and you’re holding on tight to the string to keep it flying in the same place. Now, having never flown a kite myself before, I’m taking what we call in our business poetic license.

Anyway, Slow and I stood in the yard for I don’t know how long just staring up at the thing in the sky – we’d walk around to different spots to see if we could get a better view of the thing, but we couldn’t.  Then, all of a sudden, it took off like it had been shot out of a cannon and roared off to the northeast toward Camden. Just took off and the noise stopped just that quick. Freaky. Spooky. Eerie.

Slow looked at me, and I looked at her and we practically ran over each other on the way back to the kitchen door and bolted inside. Slow locked the screen door behind us and then the real door as fast as her shaky hands could move. I looked at the clock on the stove and it read 3:38. She and I were both a wreck.

Then she said, “Red Man, I think we just saw our first drone.” I could feel a chill of fear moving over me. That thing was a DRONE? You mean to tell me DRONES are loud and hover over neighborhoods and then take off like bullets? That’s what DRONES are? That’s not how they look on Homeland.

Well Sports Fans, apparently we were the only souls stirring during the DRONE visit. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why nobody else was up and about in our neighborhood when it was so LOUD. Of course, I can’t wait for Slow to tell Pretty this story when she wakes up in a little while to go yard-sale-ing. I’m afraid Pretty will have her doubts about the whole narrative and may chalk it up to an ambien sleepwalker gone wrong in the back yard.

Thank God Slow has me for a witness.

Get me outta here, Percy. I’ve got to check the morning news to find out if any other DRONE reports have been filed. Big Brother is truly watching some of us.

 

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