We slept to the sound of gunfire.
Not a flurry of shots, like a firefight or a gun battle would be. Not a steady rhythm like you would hear from a firing range. It’s rural here. It could be a firing range, but the rhythm wasn’t right. Sporadic fire, but with soft edges. Not a hard-edged crack like a rifle makes. Softer like a shotgun. More of a whump, but definitely gunfire. Late at night. Just outside the RV Park. Couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t figure it out. Had to ask the next day.
Judy asked at the office. It’s not a firing range. It’s not banditos. We’re very close to the Mexico border, but it’s not bandits. It’s air guns. Air guns in the agricultural fields around the RV Park. Automated air guns. They don’t shoot at anything. They just fire sporadically. They are there to protect crops from critters.
I don’t know what the crops or critters are. I can look over the fence and see cropland. I can see a giant pivot sprinkler. There was even a crop duster flying low level passes, but I can’t see the crops. There are flocks of blackbirds around during the day, but hard to believe they’d have to shoo them away at ten o’clock at night.
Last night we slept to the sounds of hoot owls. One owl right over our motorhome. Another high in a palm tree across the way. We were up at midnight with our binoculars trying to pick them out in the dark. Surprisingly strong voices. Deep heavy resonation. By the call, we knew they were Great Horned Owls, and we’ve heard them before, but in the silence of the night, and that close at hand, it was a striking experience.
