Reason For Absence Note

I didn’t get a blog entry in yesterday, but I have a reasonable excuse! By the time I got around to blogging, it was after dark, and the moon was high in the sky. It was full moon!
The transformation experience was less painful this time, since I wasn’t wearing any shoes, but it’s still very unpleasant. That last bit of your conscious mind obsesses on the irreconcilable fact that you will lose control, and someone will die at your hands… well, paws, actually… teeth, more likely, but anyway… The knowledge of that is more excruciating than any of the nausea involved in the physical change.
The details are fuzzy, as always (and no, that’s not a pun), but suffice it to say that there was a long session of howling in the forest (many rural residents confirm this), the destruction of a chicken house (I read about it in the paper this morning: the chickens that weren’t slaughtered escaped, so it’s a total profit loss), and at least one person dead, her throat torn out “by some sort of wild animal” (morning local news.)
I woke up this morning, tired, aching, and smeared with mud and—I think—blood. There were small sticks, leaves and feathers in my matted hair and beard. Without question, I was out last night. At least they won’t find any fingerprints!

What do you mean, it wasn’t a full moon last night?

Listening to: Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, “Moanin’”