The Magic Headlamp

Avalon

The Magic Headlamp - a marvelous flashlight designed to be worn on the head, attached by a wide elastic band that adjusts to the size of any head, including one with many extra winter coverings. It was a birthday gift from my kids, and it gives me bionic sight in the dark. It beams forth from the exact location of my third eye, and I feel like an Enlightened Being roaming the dark lower world whenever I wear it.

It is a particularly bright light, an LED. If I slowly scan the dark I can catch the reflection of many eyes.

The horses' eyes reflect silver, and I can see them beyond the apparent reach of the beam in the night. Their eyes look a bit similar to stars blinking on and off low on the horizon as I walk up toward the barn. I seldom see their eyes straight on, and they pace in anticipation of their food, so I only catch glimpses of their strange triangular eyes.

The old Dukester Dog's eyes reflect gold, and he has given me a scare many times. If I have lost track of him and suddenly spot a pair of steady glowing eyes silently regarding me in the dark, a tiny jolt of adrenaline electrifies me. I believe it is a reflexive response. My genes full well recall when glowing eyes meant saber tooth lions and other woman-eating carnivores. And oh yeah, sometimes - sometimes - just for the barest, briefest microsecond, I think it is the devil coming to take me home.

When I first received The Headlamp, I had the extreme good fortune to share my home with Avalon, the most adorable cat in the world. She was a little black cat with green eyes. I tried to keep her delightful little spirit safely in the house, but she preferred being outside. She spent the better part of her indoor life scheming on ways to shoot out the door at top speed. She wanted to escort me to and from the barn, along with the Duke. We were a comic sight, walking the narrow path up and back: me, the Duke, Avalon, in that order.

One of the first times I used The Headlamp, Avalon came bounding down the driveway when she heard me calling. The intense reflections of her eyes advancing in the dark were remarkably, startlingly bright - not to mention that it made me laugh right out loud. She was irrepressible, whether I could see her or not.


Avalon at her favorite indoor post, sqeezed between the top shelf and the monitor.

The chickens' eyes also make me smile. As you would expect of a species that sleeps with the sun, their eyes do not reflect much - just tiny yellow points, jostling and gaggling about as the little flock stirs and adjusts itself according to pecking order and vantage point.

I have seen tiny eyes glowing amid the vegetation that I assumed were mice or vole eyes. Once, a pair of glowing eyes slowly raised a few inches, then slowly lowered out of sight as an animal stealthily tracked my whereabouts. I believe it was the Cheshire Cat himself - mysteriously and slowly dissolving into the black night.

This morning at the barn, I was startled to catch a pair of bright reflective eyes glowing from the topmost hay bale. I quickly turned my head to train the full beam toward the eyes, catching a cat full in the light. I called to it, but it turned and disappeared. It might be a neighbor's cat, or a feral cat that escaped from one of the farms, or is an abandoned survivor. I welcome it in my barn, no matter.

I have no true ending for this little post about eyes glowing in the dark. I really wanted to write about the fact that Junior has turned out to be a full-out rooster rapist after the manner of his mother's breed, the Cochins. If I titled this post the "Rapist Rooster" or something similar, think of the sort of queries my blog might turn up in!


PS. Cave Woman had a huge lapse in memory. Avalon was already gone, taken by a wild animal long before I got the magic headlamp. My memory of Avalon's eyes bounding down the driveway where from the days when I had to use a handheld flashlight and I had been given a small LED flashlight. Apologies.