Roof Top Fugitives Of Some Kind

Back in June, on a balmy, bright evening, Brett went over to Erik's house for Guys Night. I stayed home, excited to curl up with Pippa and a good movie. Whilst I ate my supper, an alert came through on my phone that a Wanted Fugitive was loose on Folly Beach, last seen scampering through the marsh grass towards James Island. I read the article with intrigue and learned that they had closed the roads to Folly, were searching cars, and had started a marsh-wide manhunt. At the time, the articles didn't list the crimes of the fugitive. They just stated that he was possibly armed and was considered dangerous. "Perfect!" I said to no one, because I was home alone on the one night there's a fugitive.
The night carried on. Brett whooped it up at Erik's house while I kept one eye on my rom-com and the other on the news update. Folly Beach Search Complete, Fugitive believed to be on James Island, etc.

I went to bed about 11:00, surprised that Brett wasn't home yet. He get's sleepy by 9:00. I left a few lights on for the Big Guy and drifted off to slumberland. At midnight I woke up and Brett wasn't home. "The fugitive!" I thought immediately, but I wasn't awake enough to think reasonably so I audibly moaned in agony before falling asleep again. In my unconscious mind, Brett had been caught in the crosshairs of the whole thing. Erik's house isn't far from a dark, seedy street. Definitely the street I would go to if I was on the run. Brett had been taken or stabbed. I was certain.
At 12:30 Brett came home without any flesh wounds and quietly slipped into bed and turned off the lights.
"Brett, there's a fugitive." I mumbled.
"What?"
"He's here on James Island. They can't find him."
"That's ok." Brett responded calmly. He could read through my sleepy remarks to see that I was actually quite concerned.
"I thought he stabbed you."
"Why?"
"He's dangerous and headed right towards us."
I only remember part of this exchange as I was mostly asleep. Brett and I drifted off and at 1:00am we heard the strangest, loud sound that immediately frightened all four of us. Grace and Pippa let out short, huffy grunts, their heads high, ears standing tall. The sound was right outside our bedroom window. It fired off again. The girls cocked their heads. Brett and I held our breath and listened.
"What is that?" one of us whispered.
The sound could best be described at hooting monkeys. Which is quite out of place on James Island so I became certain that the fugitive was sitting on our roof, calling to his friends in their secret monkey language to come pick him up.
I suggested this to Brett and he wasn't so convinced.
"It's probably just a monkey."
"We don't have monkeys. Why would there be a monkey?" I whispered back to him.
"An owl, then." Neither of us had ever heard this sound before.
"So I've lived in this house more than a year and happen to hear a "monkey" call for the first time on the same night that there is a fugitive on the loose?"
I saw Brett consider the odds of such things.
The howling roof top fugitive let out his call again and down the street we heard his friends respond with the same collection of gurgles.
"They're closing in on us. Do you have a gun?"
"Lu, I think it's all ok." Brett got up and peered through the front door window. "I don't see anything."
"Well of course not. He's on the roof!"
I appreciate Brett for being level-headed when my imagination gets the best of me, so I felt both relief and real fear when he began to prepare a method of home defense.
"I really don't think it's the fugitive." he said.

I fell back asleep telling Brett how scared I was and the blasting cackle woke us up again an hour later. We drifted from slumber to fear all night long and finally, when morning came we both got up and said, "Woah. That was awful." We were sleepy all day.

In the coming weeks we would tell many people about the strange sound we heard that night. Everyone had a suggestion. Birds, fighting cats, bad teenagers. We couldn't quite mimic the sound. We gave up our curiosity and two months later we would wake up one night to the same ordeal. This go-round I felt confident that it wasn't the fugitive, though they never did find him. It was much easier to decide that it was a critter of some kind but was no less easy to sleep through. The next morning we mimicked the sound to each other as best we could and then spread word through town about our rooftop squatter.
Some friends of ours suggested coyotes and Brett readily accepted this theory after listening to their sounds on Youtube and reading an article about the excessive coyote population in North America. Henceforth, we have suggested coyotes anytime we delight crowds with the tale of that strange night. Since all of this, the coyote monkeys have sat upon our rooftop many times to torment us while we sleep. If the howling doesn't wake us up, Grace and Pip defending their home will.

Last weekend, we were hanging out with our friends, Alex and Jessie, who have these great neighbors that we sometimes see and the neighbors we're quite happy to see us that day.
Turns out they had visited a Bird of Prey museum, met a Barred Owl, and thought of us. The husband, Casey, mimicked the call he learned at the museum while the wife, Emily, stood with a happy, expectant expression on her face and her hands open, ready to receive our rejoices. We laughed at Casey and Emily, mostly because we imagined them thinking of us on their adventure day and saying, "You know, Alex and Jessie's friends. The tall guy with the dark, hairy wife? That heard the monkey on their roof?"
We looked up Barred Owls on Youtube and were delighted, relived, and embarrassed to find out that that's exactly what we've been hearing and it sounds so owl-like when you're watching an owl do it. I'm convinced that our Barred Owl has a speech impediment because he's much more loud and shrill and scary than the videos would have you believe.

Happy Idiots