Quote:
Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
We have a lab/boxer mix. When he was about a year old we build a fenced dog run at the rear of our yard. Peanut weighs about 80 lbs. and was a very happy puppy.
Anyway, some unfortunate mommy rabbit births her litter under a tree about 5 feet outsine the fence. For about a week, one little tiny cute little rabbit would go to meet Peanut each day. He didn't eat them, he wanted to play by picking them up in his teeth and shaking them. Pretty soon they'd stop moving and he'd eventually drop them, done for the day. But it would happen again the next day- never 2 a day.
I was telling my secretary how sad it was, and she, showing folk wisdom beyond me, remarked "Not for Peanut!"
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The Displaced Dog lives with the guilt of only one (vertebrate) death at his paws. There was malice aforethought. He had a malignant, depraved heart. An innocent, stupid baby opossum would have lived a long happy life harassing the rest of the neighborhood, going through trash and eventually killed by an irritated alley cat had it not been for the Displaced Dog. I guess the only good thing about the whole mess was that the opossum didn't suffer much. To the best of my recollection, there were no blood curdling screams. There was a lot of blood though. The Displaced Dog doesn’t seem to be suffering from any residual guilt, and he sleeps rather well. I wish I could sleep for 15 hours a day as well.
The Displaced Dog once caught a squirrel. He has hated squirrels his entire life. The whole household is thrown into code red upon the sighting of a squirrel. (The puppy hasn’t yet sworn her blood oath against all squirrels, so she gets kind of confused when there’s a code red declared and it appears that there are no dogs, cats or mailmen in the vicinity. She’s a willing learner, though, and she knows that you don’t ask questions when someone has set off a code red. You just do your job and follow orders.) The word “squash” makes him perk up his ears and head to the window to patrol. He has sat patiently under trees waiting for them to come down. He does this cute little hopping thing on his hind legs, hoping that he can get higher up to a tree. And the squirrels know this and taunt. They used to throw pecans at him. I swear they’d aim. They also used to go down the tree to right above the Displaced Dog’s reach. Anyhow, one time a squirrel miscalculated how far the Displaced Dog could reach, or maybe he just hopped a little higher than usual, because the next thing they both knew, the squirrel was in the Displaced Dog’s mouth. Unfortunately for the Displaced Dog, but fortunately for the squirrel, both were so shocked that they didn’t know what to do. The Displaced Dog didn’t realize that if you bark at the squirrel while it is in your mouth, you let the squirrel go. The squirrel didn’t know this either, but it was the first to figure it out after a few trials and errors, and it got the hell out of dodge. The Displaced Dog just sat there, bewildered.
The Displaced Dog also ate a squirrel once. I think. At any rate, something died in the back yard, and the Displaced Dog and my sister’s puppy scaring Labrador, Holden, decided to feast on it. Holden ended up in the ER with IV’s and antibiotics. The Displaced Dog was disgustingly and thoroughly sick for about 15 hours. I swear: my black dog looked green. After three baths and two rolls of paper towels, he was fine. I think he still lords it over Holden that he has stronger intestinal fortitude and he didn’t have to go to the vet.
