Monday's Animals

Monday morning Willow and I returned from our walk just before daybreak. As soon as we got into the house she growled, moaned, squealed, and bark wanting in the back yard.

When she pitches a fit like that we know she smells something. I let her out, as I have many times before.

And as usual, I stepped over to the window, thinking any second I will see Willow dash across the yard to the trees that like our back yard and a cat or a squirrel will leap up and make it into a tree just in the nick of time. It happens almost every day.

One time Willow did actually pounce on a cat before the cat had a chance to run or leap. The view was partially obstructed but I know Willow hopped back yipping and the cat jumped over the fence. Willow had a scratched nose. I thought that should have been an educational even for Willow for her but it wasn’t. She didn’t learn a thing.

I didn’t see Willow dart across the yard towards where the cats and squirrels usually hang out. I got closer to the window and looked down. Willow was standing over something that had some white on it.

Out to the back yard I went quickly. Willow was standing over a dead rabbit dumbfounded. It had a long body with a white chest. The poor thing had a broken neck. There was no blood. Only a wet ear where Willow was licking it.

Willow has a rope looking toy that sort of reminds me of a rag-doll. She plays with it by running around with the rope-thing in her teeth jerking it wildly. I thought she was just playing. Now I know she was training to break a poor little creature’s neck.

I took the rabbit, wrapped it in several plastic bags and put it in our garbage can. Luckily, garbage day was the next day.

I wanted to get rid of the evidence, so to speak. My 87 year old neighbor Jim gets very upset when a hawk, cat, or dog tries to get one of his wild “pets”. A cat belonging to our neighbor Bob got a hold of a chipmunk one time and Jim chased it over to Bob’s house. Bob had to explain to Jim that cats and dogs do that – kill animals and eat them, that was their instinct. Jim didn’t accept that, he told Bob the next time he caught him he was going to shoot the cat.

I didn’t want my poor Willow to be dodging bullets out in the yard.

After my wife Anna dealt with AAA and the changing of the bad tire she went to pick up her mother to take her to the doctor. In the middle of her mother’s back side yard was a dead raccoon.

There have been some raccoons locally with rabies. For that reason I didn’t care about picking it up. And, it was dead in the middle of a yard. It wasn’t struck by a car or anything else. It just died, so there was a good chance it had rabies.

Anna called Animal Control and they said they would send somebody out and get it that very day. They didn’t. Nor, did they get it Tuesday.

But they did get it Wednesday.

I wonder how many scavenger animals such as dogs and coyotes dropped by to get them a chew before Animal Control picked it up?