Somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by a big fat shepherd mix stepping on my head. Let me tell you — that gets me up rather quickly. Not necessarily alert, but at least I was awake.
Moose was having a crisis, and I quickly figured out why — we were having a thunderstorm, complete with flashes of lightning and super loud kabooms overhead. My big fat shepherd, you see, is a big fat chicken. Normally, when he hears something that scares him, he goes to hide under the desk where I do my work. Not that there’s enough room for him, mind you, but he tries really hard.
Since I wasn’t at my desk, he didn’t know what to do!
I managed to get the Moose calmed down enough to lay down next to me… but at the next crash of thunder, he was up and roaming again. (This time he stepped on my chest.) Every rumble of thunder, it was the same thing — he’d get up and wander around the room, panting and looking distressed.
Finally, I got the brilliant idea to take him into the bathroom. At least the bathroom doesn’t have windows, so he wouldn’t see the lightning and the sound of thunder would be a little bit buffered. Once the storm had mostly passed, we were able to go back into the bedroom and (eventually) go back to sleep. I didn’t nod off in the bathroom, nope, not at all.
Lally, through all this, kept glaring at us because she was still trying to sleep. Normally she’s the one who’s afraid of everything — she won’t go into a room where the ceiling fan is on, and she runs from crinkly plastic bags. But apparently thunderstorms and a Moose in motion barely faze her.