At night, at what might be bedtime for most, I like to go outside and sit on my front porch. Since I am a fan of cold weather, it doesn't bother me a bit that the temperatures are falling. Indeed, the cooler the weather, the fewer the mosquitoes.

I enjoy it most when the automobile traffic finally begins to settle down. I don't live on a particularly busy street, but on some nights it seems as if the traffic will go on forever.

It doesn't, and I realize it is just my impatience at work.

I've resolve for the billionth time to learn patience telling myself that all the worry I can muster — all the worry that all the people of all the world could generate — would not make this planet rotate even the tiniest bit faster or slower. The spin is what it is, set in motion by whatever force in whatever way you happen to believe in.

Your belief won't change anything, either. What is, is.

Then, as if on cue, the lights in my neighbors' houses begin to blink off and I can feel truly alone, usually for the first time of the day.

But I am never alone outside in the darkness, not nearly.

A stray cat who hangs around begins her nightly prowl when the traffic dies down.

I don't know exactly what she is looking for, it certainly cannot be food, since I know she is regularly fed and, despite being outside at all times is pretty hefty.

On this point, I don't have any right to judge, though.

I've decided it is possible she just likes to prowl. It's a cat thing, I suppose.

Still, she realizes she is both a hunter and hunted at the same time. She glances in my direction and stops cold. I can't believe she could see me in the darkness from at least 50 feet away but maybe she does, or maybe she just senses me. When she determines I'm not a threat she moves along.

A few nights ago a huge owl scared the fire out of me as I was sitting in the darkness. It is amazing just how loud they can be, especially when there is no other sound around to compete with their call. "Hoot" isn't quite correct for the sound they make, but when I tried to write it here, "hoot" came closer than any collection of letters I could put together.

In the daytime there is also a large hawk that soars a hundred feet or so above the neighborhood. It is big enough to carry off my smaller dog if it had a mind to do so.

Fortunately, there's never been an incident.

Then there are the unseen things that creep along in the night. I know we have both possums and raccoons in the vicinity, though it is often much later before they make their appearance out in the open.

But I likely hear them at night when the branches on trees — or perhaps on the ground — snap in the distance. The longer you sit outside at night, the louder it seems to get from all the animal sounds.

Don't ask me why but, noise or not, the racket animals make is still more peaceful to me than what is generated by man and his machines.

When you think about it, the lives that animals lead is not all that much different than man.

They get hungry, they feel pleasure and pain, they have their "work" hours when they struggle to earn a living. There are probably friendly members of the species and mean ones, animals have personalities just like human beings.

And, just like us, they probably fall asleep when they get warm and cozy and sit in a comfortable chair.

Wait, that is probably just me. Wrapped in my warm, A&M fleece, I fell dead asleep one night while listening to my night sounds. When I woke up, nothing really was stirring.

Then I realized what had happened. My snoring at sent all of them back into their burrows and dens, away from whatever animal was making all that noise. I went back inside then. It's a terrible thing to disrupt nature in its course.