Not the woods like most people imagine (at least not anymore), but the woods of N. Central Florida. Kinda scrubby and now has a lot of people living out here. There is a pasture behind us and we live on our own little 2.5 acre plot of nature.
Why am I telling you all of this, specially knowing we are leaving soon? Because until the day we leave we will be having critter stories...
If you scroll back thru this blog, or search, you will find a couple few of them.
This one is new, and not too exciting, but still interesting...but I need to go back a few years to preface this one...
When we first got Annie, she was about 5 or 6 months old and Tug was gettin on up there in years. They had a couple Alpha issues there at the beginning, one of which had to do with a rabbit. Now Annie was, and still is, a bit ungainly...built weird I guess, Australian Cattle dogs seem to be a little longer than normal, but rather barrel shaped? I don't know, just different. Whatever it is, she sure doesn't look very fast or agile. But she managed to chase down, catch and kill a rabbit one day - before she turned a year old!!! Tug took that opportunity to 'explain' to her that He was Alpha....took him a while, and a bit of effort, but he managed to growl her off that rabbit and took it away from her. Mission accomplished. No further tests of leadership ensued. When we had to put Tug down, Annie started a little bit of Alpha stuff, but it settled pretty quickly...looking back on it now, I think the chasing cats when stressed thing was part of that and we just didn't recognize it...but I could be wrong.
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| The Great Mouse Killer |
Sitting in the living room, watching tv and there is a bit of a commotion and then Annie jumps up and in a flash is across the room, growled the cat off and killed the mouse that Rosie had just caught! Stood over her trophy like a champ. We let her stand there for a couple minutes, just to see what was going to happen. When nothing did, Trav took the corpse and disposed of it, and gave all concerned a victory treat. After all, what they did was a good thing.
Well, get up this morning, and start my coffee and Rosie is kinda interested in something under the stove...we watch for a few, no movement and figure she is just hyper because of the night before. We don't hear or see anything and just go on about our morning.
About thirty minutes later we hear a commotion and some squeaking and Annie rushes into the kitchen and the squeaking stops as she proudly brings a mouse into the dining room and drops it. Rosie caught it, Annie took it and poor Trav had to kill it and dispose of it. Treats all around!!! (not for Trav lol)
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| The highly valued mouse catcher |
The cat is still on high alert, but we haven't seen, or hears,
any further signs of rodentia - and are hoping that is the lot of them. But if it's not, I am confident that the expert team of critter catchers living with us will handle it in a professional and humane manner.
Gotta love our babies - they earn their spot in our lives by more than their unconditional love.
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