ONE OF my favorite Country and Western songs is Eddie Rabbit’s melodic and rhythmic tune, I Love a Rainy Night. The tempo mimics the swishing of windshield wipers, as they try to clear the rain for half a second. It’s one of the few upbeat tunes one will hear about the topic of rain. Most songs about rain tend to be sad or maudlin, but Rainy Night stands out as an anthem for those of us who love a good rain.

Unlike the former truck driving singer named Eddie Rabbit, I do not like to drive in that kind of rain. I love to hear it on my home’s roof, however. When the skies burst with rain, there’s no place like home.

If one is safely and warmly indoors, a heavy rain is usually welcome. There’s something about being inside our own personal lair when the rain is pelting the vicinity. It’s comforting in a way that seems natural. Many of us comment to each other about how such events are “good sleeping weather.”

GIVE ME a rainy night, the sounds of rain and wind on the roof and windows, and I’ll likely find an excuse to snooze. I can curl up and get some great Z’s during those rainy evenings.

The commonality of this feeling — that rainy nights are somehow comforting to us in a way which encourages us to sleep soundly — is something I have given thought to, trying to understand better. I have a theory.

We are animals. Like all animals, we sit somewhere on the natural predator and prey continuum. As animals, particularly in more remote times in human history, we fear being hunted at night by animals that hunt at night. This fear of being hunted at night compelled humans to use fire to protect the human camp sites, the human communities.

But predators do not typically hunt in the rain. They need their ability to see well at night, and to smell and hear potential prey. A rainy night would therefore likely signal humans that our concerns about predators should abate during such a time.

IT IS my surmise that early humans came to feel safe from predators when rainstorms came at night. While the rain might make it difficult to maintain a fire, it would also make it virtually impossible for larger predators to smell the scent of humans or their food. It would make unlikely any risk of attack by predators.

If I am correct about that, it would help explain why humans find sleeping at night during rain so natural. It tells us we can sleep more deeply, and with less worry about monsters that might get us while we sleep. I have long felt that nightmares and bad dreams are partially driven by the very real risk of attack to humans by predators, a fear that humans have had for much of human history. It has only been in the past few hundred years that relative freedom of humans from such predation has been inhibited by the homes and security we now have.

Whatever the reason I feel this way, whatever the reason humans seem to share this trait, I do love the rainy nights. They comfort me in a way that seems innate.

© 2009, Pappy Moore, All Rights Reserved.

Pappy Moore is a humorist, a native son of East Texas who still makes the piney woods his home.

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