I spent an extremely uncomfortable night in a lake cabin in New Hampshire once, listening to a fisher cat scream. It legit sounds like a woman or child being tortured. It even got hoarse eventually, just as a human would. God that was awful.
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Friends of mine used to live right near people with peacocks. I always had a hard time distinguishing that sound from human screams.
There’s no doubt at all about that, not after my 50 years of consistent enslavement by the hairball factories.
After aforesaid foreclosure from the Lost Money thread, we ended up living with our kids in a mobile home park. Impressive place when you first see it, there’s a lake, and ducks, geese, and peafowl. Later, we learned there were also dog-sized raccoons that growled at people and feasted from the trash cans.
The peafowl! Seeing the peacocks spread their beautiful feathers was impressive! And watching the peahens with their line of chicks following them was oh-so-cute.
You get enough male peacocks in one place, though, they strut, they show their tail feathers, and they scream at each other. My son worked nights, and trying to sleep days with the screaming going on practically under his window was unbearable. He finally bought a pellet gun, but I don’t know if he really started popping them with the pellets.
One day Mr VOW and I were going to visit friends. An adolescent male peacock (short, stubby tail feathers) was trying to impress the girls. He spread out his little bitty tail, and started to revolve around, searching for an appreciative audience. When his fat white butt faced my husband, it was almost reflex: Mr VOW took two steps closer to the bird, and kicked that butt for all he was worth.
The peacock sailed in an arc, like a football headed between the goalposts.
We ran like Hell out of there, and laughed our asses off in the car. It wasn’t so much as an act of animal cruelty, but a knee-jerk reaction to the constant torture of those damned screaming birds!
~VOW
Silence, then the quiet whoosh of air slipping past the fuselage of an airplane in flight. Very disturbing, especially in the mountains. At times like these, I do, seriously, miss the roar of an aircraft engine. Two would be better.
Another version of silence that is in some ways more terrifying. You’re alone in the house but for the 3 and 5 year old kids on the weekend. They’re awake, you’re awake. And the house is quiet…
I am so cracking up at the vision of “flying” peacock. Did you live in the Cordes Junction area when that happened? My first home was in Cordes Lakes and the peafowl were horrible. Peafowl can kick coyote butt without even breaking a sweat. I once went on a round-up, the plan was to herd the birds into a yard that had been set up with nets so we could take them out to the ranch. The guy who had the yard and nets had already been setting out food, so the birds were pretty used to going there.
So, everything was set up, we were all expecting to be done in half an hour. It was a total disaster. Peacocks are not nice birds and they peck and hit you with their wings and scratch you with claws as they fly away.
Oh, the sound I hate hearing is the non-sound of my BB not breathing. I’ve heard it twice, never want to hear it again.
Oh, gawd, I HATE that sound. I adore cats and my current Nikki is basically my shadow/best friend … but I cannot stand the sound of her (or any animal) licking or slurping. Drives me absolutely insane.
Loud eating noises make me cringe.
The high-pitched whine from ceiling lights.
When the door opens in the middle of the night, and a small voice says “Mommy, I don’t feel so good.” Followed by puking. It took forever until the little 'uns learned to aim for trash cans or toilets.
I think I have a touch of misophonia, because I really dislike:
chewing sounds, or even wet mouth noises (listening to an audiobook narrator’s spit moving around in his mouth is hell for me–I’m talking to you, Stephen King!)
Loud pouring of a beverage into a glass
Crinkling wrappers (like candy wrappers), especially when the person keeps on doing it
The sound of any word or phrase repeated incessantly (little kids going “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” drive me bats, so it’s probably a good thing I don’t have any.)
Don’t think this one’s been posted yet. Get startled out of sleep by a loud SPLASH from a bathroom that is not currently occupied. Discover that the upstairs idiots “forgot” not to use plumbing that has a leak identified (both involved apartments are two-bathroom. They had a perfectly valid alternative), resulting in water POURING from the ceiling (thankfully, directly over a bathtub, so none of our stuff was damaged).
Peacock screams are awful. A kid (goat type) screaming sounds like a kid (human type) in anguish. Fucking Daryl Issa multi-noise car alarms, yuk. But those are merely bothersome. Any nearby fire alarm, yikes. Gunfire in the street outside our hotel on the Honduras side of the Guatemala border, yikes. The grunt of a bear taking a dump on our front steps, yikes. But worst is a helicopter hovering directly overhead. They’re usually looking for wildfires or fugitives so if we don’t smell smoke there must be some bad hombre around.
Departing John Wayne airport in a 757–take off like a cat shot from a carrier. REAL steep climb, and then silence as the engines throttle to neutral. The the quiet sound of the air stream and the aircraft tube creaking as we go ballistic. Moments later weight returns to 1g as the engines spool up.
Noise abatement.
To quell panic, the air crew warned us before take off. Gods help anyone who wasn’t paying attention for the warning.
–Second one—
Working in the projection booth and hearing what sounded like a 4x8 sheet of metal landing on edge, followed by glass shards hitting the floor.
(think a $2000 lightbulb just RUDed)
I was visiting my sister. Suburbs. Nice, upscale homes but they were fairly close to each other.
Her neighbor had a ne’er-do-well overgrown teenage son. We put the kids to bed and sat out on her patio and the neighbor kid started shooting hoops in the backyard. After a while we went in. He kept bouncing that damn ball.
It was:
Bounce, bounce shoot, thunk and bounce bounce, shoot and thunk and bounce, bounce shoot and thunk. Over and over and over.
At 3am he was still going. I think I finally fell asleep at 4am, or so.
The next morning I complained. My sister says they’ve gotten used to it. Well not me.
I marched over to the neighbor and made a complaint to his parent. Didn’t stop anything. Same thing for 3 nights. The 4th night I go outside at 1am and yell at him to put that damn ball up. His mother called the police. They came. I saw them drive up to their house through the window. I woke my sister up. In case I got arrested. We went outside. The whole dang neighborhood came outside at 2am.
The cop came over and ask me exactly what I yelled and why. And what did I say when I went over to their house 3 days prior.
He said she was saying I cursed and called her and her kid names. I did no such thing.
I recorded on my cel phone what I said to the Mother at her door. I was perfectly nice and rational.
By this time the whole neighborhood is chiming in with their own complaints about this kid.
The police took his basketball. And put it in his car. The whole neighborhood applauded.
The next day I got a dozen roses delivered. And another neighbor cooked food for us.
It took a shy, reserved Arkansas woman to clean-up that wild Texas suburb
I get in a fevered sweat if I hear a basketball bouncing, still.
I never want to hear my hair stylist say “Whoopsie!”
Although at this rate I won’t be going to the salon anytime soon so it will be my own voice probably saying something more expletive-laced as I attempt to cut my own hair.
