This is a truly sobering tale of murder and intrigue. Molly, our Golden Retriever is very likely one of the friendliest dogs on the planet. Her tail is capable of knocking over very heavy objects when she meets a stranger right?! Not so, at least not always. Our neighborhood is populated with a flock of wild chickens that local folks for some strange reason like to keep fed and fat. Every now and then the population gets thick so a few of them explore the neighborhood looking for new pickings.
In her privileged lifetime, Molly has encountered two of these birds in our backyard. Neither was paying enough attention when she “retrieved” them and played with them until they were on their last gasp. Both ended up going the way of the Great White Plastic Bag, into our large green plastic garbage can and finally, into our giant community landfill where they now lie with other murder cases I am sure.
Since those two instances a few years ago, the dumb clucks have kept their distance. In fact, now we typically see them only when Molly and I are taking Samantha to school and very often, one is crossing the road. When that happens, I do one of two things. I hold my hand out, palm up in supplicating fashion, and loudly ask, “WHY?” as in, “Why is the chicken crossing the road?” Or, I speed up a little in an attempt to practice a little flock control. I am sure Molly prefers the latter maneuver although it hasn't really happened.
Molly and I also see chickens when we are jogging in the neighborhood. This used to make Molly very excited and she would lunge on the end of her harness in a blatant attempt to do two things; separate my arm from its socket and practice instinctive retriever techniques.
Now, all she does is turn her head slightly and look as if to say, “You clucks are too easy. If this old guy on the other end of my harness would let go for a second, I would be all over you birds like a cheap suit but go ahead, live another day.”
As a result chickens…don’t come to our backyard no’ mo’.
The intrigue hit again on a Saturday night. I was getting ready to hit the hay and noticed Molly was running around our shed acting pretty excited and barking once in a while. My guess was she had a possum under there (yes, we have a few in the neighborhood) and she was trying to get it to come out and play chicken. I finally got her attention and we went in the house and that was that.
Last night the barking started again but didn’t last long. Julieann went to get Molly in from the backyard and noticed she was up to something in the back. It is a pretty large, dark lot so Julie got a flashlight to see what Molly was up to.
A few seconds later, Julie came back and told me she thought Molly had been sprayed by a skunk. We didn’t see any animals but the smell was pretty unmistakable and Molly was very busy rolling on the ground and rubbing against our trees.
We corralled her and she had a pretty bad odor but it didn’t seem like skunk. We shampooed her three times in the backyard in an effort to control the smell and it didn’t work too badly so that was it for the night.
When we let her back in the house she seemed pretty excited too. She was moving around the house pretty quick looking "bright eyed and bushy tailed" if you know what I mean.
The next morning, I had to get up at 3 to head for an early east coast flight. When I got to Denver and checked the cell phone there was a message from Julieann. Molly had killed a skunk and Julie had called animal control to remove it.
So there you have it. We have a ‘cereal killer in our home disguised as a lovable, cuddly golden retriever. It is our dirty little secret but we are going to live with it.
Since the first incident, Molly has been zapped by other skunks twice. If you haven’t been counting, the score is Molly 1, Skunks 3. The chickens probably never will score.
No comments:
Post a Comment