A Dog Tale: Frances at work… or more like…. play.
Well, you all surely know how much I love my dogs. They are always doing things that warm my heart, or make me laugh, or just make me glad to be in their company.
So, tonight, a dog story…. a true one… that happened today.
We recently had some sod put down in our yard. Since the greenishness occurred, we’ve had a little bit of a squirrel party going on back there. It’s nuts. This morning I looked out and there were five… all just sorta’ standing around the water cooler, drinking squirrel coffee and snacking on sticky pastries…. sorta’. At any rate, they were back there.
A little later, Frances went outside. She LIVES to chase a squirrel. Any squirrel. Honestly, it is one of her biggest joys in dog life… stalking Skippy and his pals. Well, she was out in the yard for a pretty long time this morning and I popped out on the back porch to observe her activities. I inquired: “France, what are you doing girl?”
She whips around, looks right at me, and spits a big nut out of her mouth. It looked like some kind of walnut… with the green covering still on it. Then, she almost flashed a doggy grin my way. I swear it looked like she was smirking.
So here’s my guess. She flounced at one of those squirrels…. scared the bejeezus right out of it, and that nut right out of its mouth. Skippy made a successful getaway up the trunk of a Palmetto tree…. but Frances recovered the nut. THEN, she taunted the squirrel for the rest of the morning. Carrying that nut around in her mouth, spitting it out just far enough to tease the squirrel…. even tempt it….
…. and that was her game. Another day at the office for my little trickster….. such a great girl.
I planted some walnuts we received for Christmas out back in some containers, just to see if they would grow. These weren’t 10 ft. from the back door my thinking was that since we have a dog they should be safe. One sprouted last week but it was not to last. I can tell you that a 13+ year old Lab is apparently considered a threat level of “0”. Something chewed it off and took the nut yesterday, all I had left was a hole in the container and part of the sprout. This would never happen with a German Shepherd..
Katie probably gave the squirrel a boost up to the planter….
Our cat Felix had a mouse friend for a little while. I kid you not! He would “escort” the little thing to his food and water bowl, and sit by, while the mouse ate and drank. I wish I had filmed it.
I told Felix the little mouse had to go to “Mousey Camp”…..
We set a trap.