109 dB of unholy racket
Last weekend I was helping my grandmother around the house – cleaning the wood stove, the chimney and so on. While I was there, she mentioned there might be a mouse (or a rat, or Mickey himself) in the storage room, basically the room where she keeps tools, preserved fruit, pickles and the like. That sounded like a perfect job for my dachshund and me.
We eventually found the spot where the mouse had been hiding, but it was fast and disappeared somewhere among the shelves packed with jars and stuff. Nobody had any idea where it went, so my dachshund’s nose was the only tool we had. And boy, did she deliver. Once she located the target, the mighty barking started. And I mean a real unholy racket. I had never heard her bark so loudly, and that’s saying something coming from a dachshund owner, if you know what I mean.
At some point I realized the barking was genuinely unpleasant. I quickly fired up the Noise app on my Apple Watch Ultra 2, and it repeatedly showed 109 dB. I know, it’s not a calibrated device, and the “measurement setup” was me standing about a meter to her side, trying to read the numbers while still looking for the mouse.
Still, it was easily the loudest I’ve ever heard her. And it kind of makes sense. She clearly understood we were in hunting mode – not playing with a squeaky toy, not chasing the neighbors’ cat, and not going after one of our chickens that escaped (she knows she’s not allowed to grab those).
We didn’t catch the mouse in the end, but we successfully drove it out. After that kind of welcome, I doubt it’s planning to come back.
Working with my dog, hunting real prey, 109 dB of unholy racket. Great weekend.
