It was late, after eleven when I heard giggling coming from the kitchen. Being the curious sort I went downstairs, tiptoeing through the hallway and stood just outside the entrance to the room and listened.
There was another burst of chuckles. It was Terri, and I immediately assumed she had a bit too much wine. I peered into the kitchen to see her at the table, watching something on her computer. She was smiling, the kind of smile you have when you’re having a nice, relaxing time.
It occurred to me that maybe this is what she did when she stayed up later than me. A glass of wine, enjoying herself while I was sawing wood.
“Another YouTube winner?” I asked, walking into the kitchen.
“Oh, way better,” she said.
I stepped closer and looked over her shoulder. The scene was familiar, even in the dark.
“Is that our…”
“Front porch,” Terri said. “Yup. From last night.”
I took in the scene, my wife, glass of wine in hand, watching video from our doorbell camera.
“It’s an interesting way of relaxing,” I said.
“It’s better than ninety-percent of what’s on TV,” she said.
I took another look at the view in the darkness from our front porch. It was pretty sedate.
“I don’t really get it,” I said. “What were you laughing at?”
“Oh wait, look, there he is again. I mean, I think it’s a he,” she said, pausing the video.
There in the lower corner of the screen was a black and white cat. Terri hit play and the cat meandered around our front porch, rubbed his back against a column of the railing and looked behind him.
“And here they come,” Terri said. “They always follow this guy, B-and-W I call him.”
“For black and white?”
“You’re a lot smarter than we give you credit for,” she said, before continuing. “This guy leads the group. They don’t show up often, but when they do it’s like there’s a whole parade of them just walking back and forth.”
Sure enough a stream of five or six more cats followed, all roaming around our front porch like a meeting had been called. It was a nice, serene, peaceful scene until a blob, really more of a blur, dropped from the top of the screen. It landed with a thud and set off a round of cat screeching.
“Good heavens,” I said, “what was that?”
“That’s the cat from two blocks over. That family with all the crap on their lawn,” she said.
“Ah yes, I can see why he would want out of there.”
“That cat for some reason always seems to be on the roof of the porch, and always seems to fall off.”
“Maybe it’s his schtick,” I said. “What he does best. It seems to get a lot of laughs from the others.”
The falling cat was in the middle of the pack now and there was a ton of meowing that sounded more like complaining about his ungraceful entrance.
“I don’t think so,” Terri said, shaking her head. “My theory is he that he spies on the group, and always falls off the roof in the course of the spying.”
“Probably a foreign spy of some sort,” I said. “I like to think our homegrown spies are far more skilled.”
I pulled a chair over to watch some more and asked, “When did this become appointment viewing, our doorbell camera?”
“Oh, a few weeks ago,” she said. “Remember when I found that flip flop on the front lawn.”
“I remember.”
“I figured maybe it fell off someone in the middle of the night,” Terri said.
“One can only imagine how that came to happen,” I said.
“I don’t think I mentioned it, but I found out who it belonged to. That blonde down the street.”
“The new couple that moved in?”
“Yes, I went back and watched the footage from the night before. She goes running by sometime after two in the morning, and I mean running by. The flip flop goes flying and either she doesn’t care, or doesn’t notice.”
“Right onto our lawn,” I said. “Wonder what she was doing out quite literally running around at two in the morning.”
“As you said, one can only imagine. And you can’t believe what else you’ll see when most people are asleep right here on our quiet little street,” Terri said.
On cue a large, what looked to be a large furry creature walking upright lumbered by carrying something.
“Is that a…”
“Bear,” Terri said.
“Carrying a bike?”
“Hmm, I’ve never seen a bear in person, except at a zoo,” Terri said.
“I’m not an expert but I do know they generally don’t walk around carrying bikes,” I said.
“He’s probably too heavy to ride it. He’d crush it. Maybe its a gift for a little cub somewhere.”
“Ah, I don’t think that’s a real bear,” I said.
“Odd how whatever it is came from the same direction as the flip flopper,” Terri said.
We watched for a few more minutes, and I had to admit, there was a certain relaxing aspect to the footage. We watched for a while longer. There was the usual nocturnal wanderings of raccoons and possums. An occasional car would pass by. Nothing out of the ordinary until the bear returned.
“Hmmm,” Terri said leaning closer to the screen. “Maybe its like a Bigfoot or something.”
“A bike-snatching Sasquatch,” I said.
We were fascinated by the bear, even more so when he stopped in front of our house, reached up and tugged on his head. Slowly, he removed his head like a college mascot taking a breather.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Isn’t that…”
“The blonde’s husband,” Terri said.
We watched as the bear sans mask peered into the window of our car, then came over and looked around the garage.
“Remember a while back when there was a rash of things that went missing from backyards?” I asked.
“Oh do I,” Terri said, nodding and watching the bear put his mask back on.
“I think we may have cracked the case,” I said.