I think I posted before about how my house has a few very small brained squirrels taking up residence. You'll all be happy to know that once we worked in the front yard (that same weekend we noticed their comfyness on our front porch) they decided to leave. For good. I think I have also posted about my dog Roxy, the first dog we adopted (thank god we stopped, too many dogs!) and how she was a stray that had obviously just had puppies. I think being a new momma supporting her babies she found the predator in herself, food only of course, not people. If each of my dogs were dropped in the middle of the woods/city/not our house and had to fend for themselves Roxy would be the only one to last a day. Well she'd last for as long as she needed to, the boys would lay down and die like the drama queens they are. Boys. Oh did I say that out loud?
A side note on the squirrel thing, we have a ton in our subdivision (bunnies and lizards too) but rarely, if not never, do you see them in our backyard. They are in everybody else's backyard, just not ours. It vexes Roxy greatly since she LOVES to play predator and the boy dogs are just not fun sport to her. When I find potted plants knocked over I know some silly lizard has just been either a) run off the property or b) eaten. As long as knocked over pots are the only evidence I find I don't care. Darwinism right?
Sunday afternoon I look out in the backyard and she's sitting in the middle of the yard looking into the sky. Unmoving. Mind you this dog hones in on prey the way a bird dog points. She sees it and Does. Not. Move. unless the prey moves. So there she is staring into the sky and I'm assuming she sees a bird on a branch and wants to eat it. She will pull birds out of the sky, very little evidence is usually left of those encounters. Like a few feathers. I guess birds are good eats. Like I said, no evidence, no harm, no foul. Darwinism.
About 15 minutes later I had to go out and check the grill. I had turned it on and it was time to clean it off with that grill scrubby thingy (yes I'm normally the one bbqing in the household). I go outside and the dogs all go running inside. I look at the grill, grab the scrubby thingy and open the back door to let the dogs back outside. They normally want to be near the person in control of what ever is going on that grill and were so excited to get in they failed to understand that Food Handler was actually on her way out. Not so smart but hey, I understand the logic if not the sense.
Unbeknownst to me, when I had let the dogs inside the object of Roxy's sky adoration had tried to make his escape. Apparently it was a squirrel high up on one of the tree branches and it has come down to make it's way across land and high tail it out of the yard. It, being of the not very smart animal variety, did not realize I was going to let the dogs right back out into the yard. Had I know it was there I wouldn't have. Because as soon as I let those dogs out Roxy went after it.
It managed to avoid Roxy's maw for about 20 feet as I chased her waving the grill scrubby thingy screaming ROXY LEAVE IT in futility. My dogs know the leave it command pretty well but that was so not going to happen with prey in HER YARD. Can you just picture this fiasco? Sorry, did not have the camera on me and no, I didn't even take pictures of the aftermath. She managed to catch the little sucker, shook it to death in about a millisecond. No blood, it just lay there belly up twitching. So gross, I hate it when they twitch. Roxy left it be when she killed it and noticed me shreaking at her. She's very sensitive and doesn't like things being waved at her. Plus she knew it wasn't going anywhere and that is very important to a good predator.
I managed to get all the dogs in the house with no others getting to the carcass. I then continued my yelling fest and tried to wrangle up the hubby to clean up said carcass. Well I wasn't going to touch it, EW! Of course he never even got to it. We had our usual Sunday evening guests over for dinner and their 14 yr old son had already picked it up and put it in a box. Delighted to no less. EW!
So there ya go. Spring time, squirrels, carnivores and delighted 14 yr old boys with the resulting carcass. This is an average Sunday in my house. When did this happen?
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