Murder!

My desk is in front of the window - looking out on the frontporch. Today, I was working on the computer and for a good 30 minutes I heared
waugh...waugh...waugh...waugh...on and on. No change in tone, the same break in between, just waugh. So I looked out the window, I saw no dog. Mind you, it was snowing at the time. I went to the other window, still no dog. Still it went on - waugh...waugh. It was Scooters voice but I could not see her. "She is in the doghouse, barking her butt off!" is what I thought. Trying to ascertain that, I leaned over the desk and really looked out. There, between the two doghouses, was a dead squirrel. It had no tail. Scooter, the little witchbitch, was in the doghouse, telling her much bigger sisters to keep their paws off her prize. So, I put my boots and coat on, got some treats and went to retrieve the poor thing. She came out of the house like a shot, got her squirrel and took off with it. It took some doing to get her to lay it down and accept a treat in it's stead. As I bent to pick it up, I could now see that she had eaten the legs off it as well. It's eyes were closed and those sharp incisors were visible. I don't feel bad for the squirrel, it had a good life and a swift death.

I am one of those people who feed all things around them. Squirrels included. In the fall I collected black walnuts and since the first deep snow, I have been laying out a handful of them every day. Of course, the squirrels help themselves to all the sunflower seeds they can get away from the birds. So, this little guy was fat - for a squirrel. He must have gotten complacent if the girls were able to catch him. Or maybe he was sick. Or just careless. Carelessness doesn't pay for squirrel.

This isn't the first time they got one.

One year there was one that would sit up on the lowest branch of the oak and chatter at them. It would throw little sticks and in the fall acorns at them. The three dogs would go nuts under that tree. Dancing on their hindlegs, trying to jump up to the branch and trying their darndest to climb up the trunk. The little squirrel was having a blast directing the movement of the three big dogs under it.

I would go out to be with the girls and it would chatter at me. "You better watch your step, they always get them in the end!" I would call up to it. And they did. One morning, I found it's little body beside the tree. Not as eaten up as today's, but dead none the less.

The girls will tolerate me hurting them. I give them shots, I clip their nails, I do many things they do not understand but I deem necessary. Some things involve pain. None of them have ever bared their teeth at me or growled in my direction. They roll over on their backs and want their tummies rubbed.

Yet, left to their own devises, they are wild things. Their instinct is to hunt and and then to kill.

So, my frontyard - enter at your own risk!

Stay well and warm.