What is that sound?

So, my husband is out of town. When he leaves I have trouble sleeping. I have to leave the back patio light on, just in case. I wake up easily. I don't like it. Last night, the first night he was gone, I went to bed around 12:30 and was brave enough to shut the patio light off. I snuggled down in my lonely bed and went to sleep.

At around 1am I was awakened by a noise. Now, I'm not the only one that doesn't sleep well when Dustin is gone. My little boys have trouble too. In a groggy voice I say outloud to what I assumed was Andrew, my seven year old, "It's okay buddy, you can get in bed with me for a while." No answer. I dozed back off.

I heard the noise again and looked at my cell phone. 1:27am. I looked over the edge of the bed on both sides. No child laying there with pillow and blankie. I heard the noise again. My heart began to pound. I prayed the sound was coming from outside and I listened hard to be sure. Alas, not coming from outside. It was inside. What was it??? I turned on the lamp and looked in the direction of the rustling. Perched on the edge of child's shoe box was a palm sized frog. My eyes bulged in horror.

Now, I'm not afraid of frogs. I picked one up in the backyard not that long ago. But Dustin is gone, it is 1:29am by now, I'm all alone and there is a frog in my bedroom! This is not right. Heart pounding and ears ringing I got up to search for something to capture it in. Racing through my mind was, "Think like Dustin! Think like Dustin!" It didn't work. He would know what to do, he always does. I couldn't find anything that seemed like a good option.

What if I miss and scream and wake the children. What if it hops under the bed, I'll never sleep. What if it gets on me and pees or something. What then? I decided to throw a towel on it and strap it around the box and run out the back door and fling it into the lawn. Seems good enough, maybe my husband would approve. Maybe not.

I decided to open the backdoor so that I would be completely ready for this event. That is when I remembered Squeaky. I closed my eyes, my face grimacing, chills running up my spine. Squeaky. Squeaky was a giant five inch moth that someone in the church gave my two little boys earlier in the week. I hate moths that measure 2 centimeters, let alone five inches. When we turned out the lights Squeaky flapped his freakishly large mothy wings inside his Tupperware prison and I thought I might die of horror.

Why was I remembering Squeaky? Because he was humanely released back into the wild a few days ago. He sat on the pine tree for a day and a half and then disappeared. I am sure that he is lurking under the eaves of the house or in the garage waiting for the perfect moment to attack me. This would be the perfect moment. Frog in the bedroom, moth planning an ambush. It seems like anything could happen.

I opened the sliding glass door in spite of my concerns about Squeaky and went back into the bedroom. By this time the frog had moved into a higher position on the box and was perched like he was going to hop off and escape somewhere. I hollered out, "No!" like you would to a dog who was peeing on the side of the couch.

The frog didn't move but I did. As fast as I could I chucked a towel over that creepy creature and knocked it inside the box. With shivers racing up and down my spine I tucked the terry cloth under the cardboard. You would have thought the box had the plague or was on fire with the horror in which I touched it. The frog was leaping about under the towel giving me a breakdown! I ran for the door. Dropped the package carefully and pulled the towel back in horror, looking to the sky for any sign of Squeaky's attack, I was safe. The frog jauntily hopped into the grass and there was no moth madness. I got back into bed and couldn't sleep. Every noise worried me.

Maybe there is a colony of frogs under the bed... You never know!