Creatures of the Night

Editorial of August 10, 2023

The first days of August 2023, have arrived. It’s the absolute height of summer. Hot, but not too hot, humid, most of the time, sunny, fairly often, rainy, pretty much a little bit every day, with some humdingers in between, and unseasonably green. We have at long last shed our down jackets and hung up our fleece, though not too far away, and embraced, though merely for a few moments, the snow-less, freeze-less few short weeks we have in front of us.

And while it’s here, we celebrate, often long into the night. The days are long, the bars are open, the restaurants are calling and the sun lingers long on the lake. We are awake and abroad, outside, for a good deal of the night, walking, dancing, perhaps carousing, exploring, and maybe even listening.

We are not the only creatures wandering through the night. And those other creatures’ wanderings have been going on for many years. In “Rural Hours,” her definitive recollection of life in Cooperstown and Otsego County in the late 1840s, Susan Fenimore Cooper writes fondly of her nocturnal friends. It was in an entry for Saturday, August 4, 175 years ago:

“As the night winds rose and fell with a gentle murmuring sough, the deep bass of the frogs and the higher notes of the insect throng continued in one unbroken chant. What myriads of those little creatures must be awake and stirring of a fine summer night! But there is a larger portion of the great family on earth in movement at night than we are apt to remember; because we sleep ourselves, we fancy that other creatures are inactive also. A number of birds fly at night besides the owls, and night hawks, and whip-poor-wills; very many of those who come and go between our cooler climate and the tropics make their long journeys lighted by the moon or the stars. The beasts of prey, as is well known, generally move at night. Of the larger quadrupeds belonging to this continent, the bears, and wolves, and foxes are often in motion by starlight; the moose and the deer frequently feed under a dark sky; the panther is almost wholly nocturnal; the wary and industrious beaver also works at night; that singular creature, the opossum, sleeps in his tree by day and comes down at night. The pretty little flying-squirrel wakes up as twilight draws on; our American rabbit also shuns the day; that pest of the farm-yard, the skunk, with the weasels, rove about on their mischievous errands at night. Some of those animals whose furs are most valued, as the ermine and sable, are nocturnal; so is the black-cat, and the rare wolverine also. Even our domestic cattle, the cows and horses, may frequently be seen grazing in the pleasant summer nights.”

Miss Cooper did not mention all the nightly navigators: barred and saw-whet owls, loons, woodcocks, blackbirds, nightingales, northern mockingbirds, robins, hermit thrushes all sing and hunt the night through; raccoons, black bears, badgers, bats, bobcats, coyotes, minks, moles, mice, otters and porcupines roam the fields and forests. And then there are the chirping crickets and creeping cockroaches.

We are not alone out there under the stars; we are surrounded by other carousers, chirpers, creepers, crooners, growlers, purrers and hunters.