Tuesday, May 21, 2013

It's nice when you can do something productive with the extra time afforded by waking up early.

I trailed in the wake of pups to the back door and let them out.  Then I went and put my retainers in a denture bath.  Returned to the kitchen to fill the bowls with kibble, then opened the door.  Praline came running in to her bowl and Chuy pulled focus by charging right to Mochi's bowl for the morning chow-down.  What was shocking was that I had to call Mochi, and here she came along, happily munching away at something in her mouth, which she promptly dropped when she was offered Chuy's bowl of kibble. 

Young mockingbird.  Mochi's first confirmed kill.  I say first confirmed because if Praline or Chuy had killed it, they wouldn't have let her have it.  I had one of those conflicted parents moments.  I was slightly squicked out by dead bird in the house and yet it was cute and I wanted to take a picture of my baby girl and her animal in-stink.  Removing the fouled fowl won the moment.

A little scrubby scrubby on the floor, take out the trash, blog a post and soon it's like I didn't get up early at all.  I blame the mockingbird.  Poor little thing. Never had a chance.  Mochi's been training all her life for that moment.  Today her low-slung little frame will sashay a little prouder knowing she's equal among her mates, able to defend hearth and home and to provide food for the pack if she feels like sharing. She has contributed!  Yay, Team WEENIE!

4 comments:

Jennifer said...

Congrats to the cute little killer

Old NFO said...

LOL, now she's a FULL FLEDGED member of the pack!

Rabbit said...

A couple of weekends ago, I noticed a tiny fledgling somethingorother crow-hopping across the den floor in my peripheral vision, closely followed by one of the cats. It was a bluejay (or a mockingbird, I forget which) that was on the raw edge of new flight plans. I put it out the front door after closing the back doors, and it hopped over into the neighbor's yard, where its nestmate swooped upon it to heckle it for its flawed previous landing. I later saw both of them on top of the shrubs next door, so I concluded all was well at that point.

BGMiller said...

For the first few years of their fuzzy lives our dogs shared an apartment with us. They got to chase squirrels and rabbits but only on a leash and, well, poppas was a bit of an anchor.

Then we moved into a house.

With a yard.

And a ground squirrel "problem."

The new neighbor lady was leaning over the fence introducing herself and giving us a rundown on the neighborhood when she groused about the squirrels and how nobody could do anything about them.

Within six weeks there wasn't a squirrel to be seen inside our fence.

Neighbor lady was impressed.

For a little bit I kept tally boards for each pup. I took a section of plywood, painted it olive drab and cut out a little chipmunk stencil. Indy made Ace in two weeks. Otto took a month. Silhouettes only got painted if I, their mother, or a trusted witness could see who made the kill.

Then I had to make a little rabbit stencil.

Then a bid rabbit stencil.

And a full size squirrel stencil.

When the board filled up I didn't bother expanding it.

Indy's board would have made Pappy Boyington buy the first round.

BGM