Predawn Jogging Mystery

Welcome back. In earlier blog posts, I’ve discussed my predawn exercise routine and the fauna, wallet, house lights and newspaper delivery vehicles I’ve encountered while jogging on our dark street. I hope you’ve paid attention, so you’ll know I’m not subject to wild fantasy. This update of my jogging occurrences could be important.

Whoosh?

One end of our street empties onto a cross street; the other end is a cul-de-sac atop a hill. When I jog, I walk the cul-de-sac’s perimeter as my reward for making it that far. One morning, as I was starting back down the hill, I heard a powerful whoosh! close behind me.

Daytime view looking down the hill
from the cul-de-sac.

In over 15 years of traversing this route at that hour, I’d never heard a peep from anything nearby except a car or graduation party. Cars and graduations parties don’t whoosh. What goes whoosh in the suburbs around 3:30 AM?

Many of you would guess an owl. Bats don’t whoosh; hawks aren’t nocturnal. A few of you might guess a vampire. I’m sorry. Vampires don’t exist; not in our neighborhood anyway.

Let me be candid. I lean toward aliens. Not the immigration kind. Well, they are sort of the immigration kind. I mean outer space aliens. I told you this could be important.

Helicopters?

You’ve heard the sound of a helicopter. The thump, thump, thump of the rotating blades is distinctive, especially in the predawn hours, when all else is quiet.

Three times over the past six months, a helicopter has been flying patterns over our neighborhood. They generally begin before or while I’m still warming up and end about 30 minutes later. They fly low and, for the last event, with a searchlight pointing downward.

Were the helicopters circling? Flying a grid? I couldn’t tell. Our mile-long street is shaped somewhat like a backward letter “J.” (I didn’t realize that for years, though I did wonder why the moon kept shifting.) With the helicopters moving and me somewhere on a backward J, I’ve no idea what directions the helicopters were flying.

Were they there for car accidents? Why no sirens?
Were they collecting geophysical data? Why at that hour in the suburbs? 

Were they searching for 2- or 4-legged escapees? C’mon, three times in six months?

I lean toward special government crews searching for aliens. I hope you’re still with me.

Fire and Rescue?

Sometime after the whoosh and shortly after the last helicopter incident, I jogged around a county rescue vehicle and fire truck, stopped, with engines running, in front of a nondescript house on our street.

Emergency lights were flashing, sirens were silent. EMTs and firefighters spoke in low tones, milling about, moving in and out of the open front door of the house. They ignored me completely.

Although I can’t or maybe shouldn’t say for sure, they did not look like EMTs or firefighters. My wife’s an EMT, and they were twice her size. I lean toward them being members of a special government organization.

Get this. After I passed by again, jogging back from the cul-de-sac, the fire engine’s horn sounded! Would firefighters blow a horn for no reason? Was it an “all clear--no alien found”?

Wrap Up

I’m not an alarmist. You know that. But I lean toward these occurrences being related. I can’t come up with any explanation other than aliens. Are they hiding something from us? Feel free to chime in here.

Thanks for stopping by. You’d better get back to keeping an eye on your own neighborhoods.