I checked the skies again when I let the heelers outside around eleven o'clock last night. The moon was shining bright, and there were actually a few bright stars visible through the thin clouds. If the clouds thinned even more, I might actually get to see the Leonids.

I had hope.

My alarm went off at 02:30. Both the wife and I jumped up in bed. She mumbled "Oh. Is that yours?" and gratefully flopped her head back on her pillow without waiting for me to answer. Went out the front door, masked heeler escorting, and checked the sky.

Clear as a bell.

So, on with the boots, a shirt (The uniform one was on top... with the name tag that lost one backing back in September. Not a problem with a t-shirt on, but without, I got constant little stabbing pains just above and to the right of the right nipple. Helped to keep awake.), then to the closet for a down vest. Back to the bedroom for a mini-mag flashlight. Back to the closet for the heavy winter coat.

Back to the bedroom for... nothing. Go back out muttering about being too asleep to know what I'm doing. Downstairs for a camp cot from the camping gear.

Can't find camp cot. New nylon folding chairs are handy. One will do.

So, out into the night. Not cold, actually. Kinda pleasantly cool, until the wind blew. Bright as can be with the nearly full moon straight up high.

When the Perseids came through, we sat in the backyard, away from the street lights and blazing refinery lights. But tonight the backyard is awash with moonlight. Head for the shadow of our neighbors' chimney.

And wake up Akita, our neighbors' replacement for Chewy. A part heeler young dog. A part heeler young noisy dog, who takes offense at me skulking around their fence at 02:40 in the morning.

Bark-bark-bark. Bark-bark-bark.

Chit.

Check the north side of the house. Nice and dark in between the house and the Dodge.

If you like sitting next to 5-6 bags of garbage, a year-dead rotting antelope head, and a can of dog poop (all nicely frozen, now, but still I know they're there).

So back to the south side, facing both the moon and the streetlight. But if you snuggle in between the two lilacs, the south tree blocks most of the streetlight. And facing east, the hood of my coat blocks most of the moon over my shoulder.

So I wait. Akita is still barking, in his non-stop cadences of three. Worse, one of the hounds in the Snow-birds' house a block away is barking in response.

Also in cadences of three.

Sure the wife isn't happy about that (she wasn't).

At 02:51 I see my first Leonid of the year. A short flash high on the left besides the house, with a faint trail that faded in place like fireworks. The second came at 02:54. I sat there for a half hour before my tally got to 13. Warm and toasty on top, the bottom half chilled from the cold gusts that came up my unprotected pajama bottoms.

Akita finally quieted about ten after three. Although the hound is still faintly woofing. It's too cold to sit here like this anymore, but we're not at peak yet. Do I resettle myself, stirring Akita up again, or go inside and call it quits?

They say this is the last time our planet will pass through the comet tail dust that generates the Leonids until 2099.

So Akita starts barking again, and is still barking (keeping the wife awake) as I enter the bedroom. For socks and jeans. And keys to get into the outfit's rig for the heeler sister's sleeping bag. By 03:25 I am settled in the chair again, sitting in a zipped sleeping bag. Warm and toasty all over.

And the meteors come.

Most are short and dim, but every once in a while, a long bright one blazes over. About one in eight.

Number 19 is bright and angled down slightly to the southeast, just behind the south elm. Number 20 strikes at almost the same instant, brighter and wider, driving straight down to the left of the same tree.

I think about these two meteors. Miniscule particles of comet dust and ice, about 1mm across according to what I read. Striking our atmosphere at almost the same time. They must have been close to each other, in astronomic terms. Motes of the trailing wake of some of the original material for our solar system. Made up of primordial molecules that have been bound together for billions of years.

Now whisped apart, in a blaze of photons. And then gone from the universe.

Such a long existence, erased so quickly.

Yet some of those photons entered my eyes, triggering chemical reactions in the retinas. Which sent paired chemically electric impulses to my brain. And froze the chemical ports of some tendrils of my neurons into a fixed pattern.

A memory.

So, that which floated idly in gravitational fields for billions of years, is now inside me.

By 03:45 I am up to fifty. My count reaches 80 at 03:50. Averaging six meteors per minute at the peak, and I can only see about a quarter of our sky.

Wow. Better than the Perseids, if I remember right, although no where near as bright or long.

And I am really torn. Do I wake the wife and sons? This will probably be the last real Leonid show of their lifetimes, as well.

Akita is quiet again. As is the hound. (But it is not quiet out... never in the time I was out did I not hear the sounds of semis on the Interstate. A constant dull roar of tires and gears, 24/7.)

Well, we know how the wife feels about that. Made it quite clear, grumbling about me stirring up Akita so she can't sleep.

She could have come out, if she was kept awake by the barking anyway. Likewise for the sons.

The meteor shower slows after four o'clock. Noticeably. And I'm warm and comfortable. Force myself to stay awake until I have tallied number 100 for the night, just as unimpressive as number one. And then I doze in my chair.

Wake a few minutes later, for another flurry of falling stars.

Number 105 is exceptionally long, near the path of #19. Number 110 is the brightest of all, looking like two parallel stars streaking straight down behind the trees. It's twenty after four.

I stay until my count reaches 130. And this is part of a cluster of meteors, so my final tally, as I head off to shove the sleeping bag back into the truck, and in to bed, is 133.