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- Jan 30, 2002
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- 7,269
It is late spring in Wisconsin, with Nature in all its fecundity. Young Bert, the not-right dog, often goes out on a 20-foot lunge line, tethered in the center of the yard, with access to bushes, tree trunks, the wood pile, and a good view of the shed where feral cats occasionally take up residence, and beyond which groundhogs are inclined to hang out, over near the silo.
He'll take care of his business, inspect the air currents for potential prey, and occasionally, sit sentry to watch for the cats or ground hogs. When he is bored, he'll give a yelp and eventually I will go out and bring him in. When I take him off-leash to go down to the mailbox, he'll charge out to the drive and up to the shed where the car is, then pivot and come racing down to catch up with me to go down the hill to the mailbox.
Actually, "catch up with me" is misleading. He will charge right past me to investigate all of the invisible (to me) clues of life that have transpired during the interval since his last charge. This time of year, most often he will end up leaping up on the stacks of corn stalks the neighbor stores along my drive, seeking out the terrorist field mice and corn snakes that will occasionally sun themselves up on the top of the 5 foot square stacks.
In another incarnation, he was a close relative of the mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and has this INSANE desire to rid the rural world of perfectly harmless corn snakes. I've interceded twice this spring, and still mourn the passing of a beautiful, four-foot long snake, sunning itself in the drive some years ago. The image of YB, t n-r d, grabbing the snake and doing a cartoon swivel of his head, slamming the opposite ends of the poor critter on the ground, still sticks in my mind. Nice snake. Uh, dead snake.
One day this spring, I hear this frantic barking out in the yard. Out I go, expecting to see a groundhog running for cover. Instead, YB has created a rigid line of leash, barely restraining him from tearing into a pile of dead branches and brush that borders the yard under the old apple tree.
"OK," I figure, "some dumb cat, bunny, snake, groundhog, raccoon, mountain lion (ok, maybe not) has taken up hiding in the brush pile and stirred the atavistic drive for YB to feed the pack. This noise has to stop."
Around I go, and in the most dignified manner, jump up and down on the brush pile (a technique learned from rabbit hunting over the years, virtually guaranteed to produce no rabbits.) Huh, no rabbits, etc....
YB is still choking himself with intensity to get to the pile. I go back to him and attempt, in a most reasonable manner, to convince him that the barking is a futile activity, and frowned upon by the leader of his pack.
He remains unconvinced. I take a branch and poke at the pile; no escapees, nor any surcease of the cacophony. Fine. I pull him back a bit, and unsnap the lunge line.
He leaps...LEAPS...not to the brush pile, but to a privet bush I planted 20 years ago, expecting to make living sculpture, but ending only with a struggling privet bush year after year.
With my lightning-like reflexes (don't go there), I lunge over and grab his collar, and pull him to me, immediately trying to dislodge whatever it is he has gulped into his maw. Deep down his throat, and I mean DEEP, I pull out a baby rabbit, no bigger than my palm, and hold it in my right hand, while my left holds the mighty hunter. The ingestion has had fatal consequences for the bunny, and YB has not bothered to chew, bite, or masticate...the idiot was swallowing it whole!
I looked with sorrow at the baby bunny, so tiny and inert. Compassion filled my heart.
Compassion did NOT fill YB's heart. Rather, a second baby bunny filled his mouth. He'd pulled my left arm down so he could get a second helping. I pitched the first fatality over into the brush pile and reached, yet again, down into the slimy cavern of my carnivore's mouth. Got a grip, tugged.
Nothing moved. Tugged again. Nothing. Stuck? Tugged yet a third time...seconds were precious. I tried to identify by feel with my fingers the anatomy of the bunny in order to extricate it.
Oh.
Hmmm. Well, then.
I stopped trying to pull YB's tongue out of his mouth. Moved my hand and pulled out the second, and equally deceased, baby bunny.
Young Bert made another lunge at the bottom of the privet bush. I restrained him.
Yep, a THIRD baby bunny crouched there. I nudged it over to the bushes, while holding on to the primitive beast in my left hand. The bunny escaped, I believe.
OK, what in the name of all that is holy and evolutionary would prompt nature to motivate a rabbit to set up a nest within four feet of the end of a leash holding a 65-pound, slavering lunatic bunny-eater? No wonder the silly things are prolific, they are so bloody stupid they HAVE to be, to survive as species.
I put YB back on the leash. He was going, "Nuawwahh, nuawwahh" a bit, and wiggling his tongue.
I felt a little guilty, but didn't apologize.
That dog ain't right.
He'll take care of his business, inspect the air currents for potential prey, and occasionally, sit sentry to watch for the cats or ground hogs. When he is bored, he'll give a yelp and eventually I will go out and bring him in. When I take him off-leash to go down to the mailbox, he'll charge out to the drive and up to the shed where the car is, then pivot and come racing down to catch up with me to go down the hill to the mailbox.
Actually, "catch up with me" is misleading. He will charge right past me to investigate all of the invisible (to me) clues of life that have transpired during the interval since his last charge. This time of year, most often he will end up leaping up on the stacks of corn stalks the neighbor stores along my drive, seeking out the terrorist field mice and corn snakes that will occasionally sun themselves up on the top of the 5 foot square stacks.
In another incarnation, he was a close relative of the mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and has this INSANE desire to rid the rural world of perfectly harmless corn snakes. I've interceded twice this spring, and still mourn the passing of a beautiful, four-foot long snake, sunning itself in the drive some years ago. The image of YB, t n-r d, grabbing the snake and doing a cartoon swivel of his head, slamming the opposite ends of the poor critter on the ground, still sticks in my mind. Nice snake. Uh, dead snake.
One day this spring, I hear this frantic barking out in the yard. Out I go, expecting to see a groundhog running for cover. Instead, YB has created a rigid line of leash, barely restraining him from tearing into a pile of dead branches and brush that borders the yard under the old apple tree.
"OK," I figure, "some dumb cat, bunny, snake, groundhog, raccoon, mountain lion (ok, maybe not) has taken up hiding in the brush pile and stirred the atavistic drive for YB to feed the pack. This noise has to stop."
Around I go, and in the most dignified manner, jump up and down on the brush pile (a technique learned from rabbit hunting over the years, virtually guaranteed to produce no rabbits.) Huh, no rabbits, etc....
YB is still choking himself with intensity to get to the pile. I go back to him and attempt, in a most reasonable manner, to convince him that the barking is a futile activity, and frowned upon by the leader of his pack.
He remains unconvinced. I take a branch and poke at the pile; no escapees, nor any surcease of the cacophony. Fine. I pull him back a bit, and unsnap the lunge line.
He leaps...LEAPS...not to the brush pile, but to a privet bush I planted 20 years ago, expecting to make living sculpture, but ending only with a struggling privet bush year after year.
With my lightning-like reflexes (don't go there), I lunge over and grab his collar, and pull him to me, immediately trying to dislodge whatever it is he has gulped into his maw. Deep down his throat, and I mean DEEP, I pull out a baby rabbit, no bigger than my palm, and hold it in my right hand, while my left holds the mighty hunter. The ingestion has had fatal consequences for the bunny, and YB has not bothered to chew, bite, or masticate...the idiot was swallowing it whole!
I looked with sorrow at the baby bunny, so tiny and inert. Compassion filled my heart.
Compassion did NOT fill YB's heart. Rather, a second baby bunny filled his mouth. He'd pulled my left arm down so he could get a second helping. I pitched the first fatality over into the brush pile and reached, yet again, down into the slimy cavern of my carnivore's mouth. Got a grip, tugged.
Nothing moved. Tugged again. Nothing. Stuck? Tugged yet a third time...seconds were precious. I tried to identify by feel with my fingers the anatomy of the bunny in order to extricate it.
Oh.
Hmmm. Well, then.
I stopped trying to pull YB's tongue out of his mouth. Moved my hand and pulled out the second, and equally deceased, baby bunny.
Young Bert made another lunge at the bottom of the privet bush. I restrained him.
Yep, a THIRD baby bunny crouched there. I nudged it over to the bushes, while holding on to the primitive beast in my left hand. The bunny escaped, I believe.
OK, what in the name of all that is holy and evolutionary would prompt nature to motivate a rabbit to set up a nest within four feet of the end of a leash holding a 65-pound, slavering lunatic bunny-eater? No wonder the silly things are prolific, they are so bloody stupid they HAVE to be, to survive as species.
I put YB back on the leash. He was going, "Nuawwahh, nuawwahh" a bit, and wiggling his tongue.
I felt a little guilty, but didn't apologize.
That dog ain't right.
