Of dogs and mice

After writing all about how Emma seems to have lost her bird dog talent she chose, today, to set me straight.

I walked out the door onto the porch this morning preparing myself for a full day of planting the remainder of the garden and flower pots but instead I was met by Ruth, Rebecca, and Caleb in a state of panic. Ruth stood by the rail sobbing and trying to tell me something about a dead something and how I must rescue the other something’s and baby something’s and blood. I was very confused. Caleb and Rebecca came to my aid. In a very concerned and sad voice Caleb told be that: “She killed the mommy and now the babies are gonna starve and it will be all our fault.” Rebecca further filled me in, in that the “mommy” Caleb referred to was a starling that had a nest up in our porch. Emma had somehow caught and killed the bird as it sat on the porch. I tried my best to console Ruth (withholding the information that Grandpa Jon Aldrich used to drown baby starlings in turpentine) and finally she calmed down when we discovered that there weren’t any babies in the nest at all. That was Emma’s surprise number one.

Number two happened not long after as I was proceeding to dirty my finger nails in the garden. Elizabeth was mowing the lawn down by the pond but all of sudden started yelling at Emma and leapt off of the mower. I yelled (we do a lot of yelling around here, because our yard is so large) down to her wondering if everything was all right. “She has a bird in her mouth,” she yelled back, “and she’s eating it alive!” When I looked closer I could tell that she did indeed have a bird in her mouth and it was disappearing at a rapid rate. Poor Elizabeth was trying in vain to get it out of the dogs mouth all the while yelling things like “ahh I can hear the bones crunching” ect. Emma of course ate the bird ( it was a Red Winged Blackbird in case you’re wondering) and Elizabeth and I went back to our work.

All this death reminds me of a little mouse named French Fry. French Fry was Megan and my mouse when we were about 10 or so. We found it in its nest in the hay field after the hay had been cut and bailed. We were thrilled to find such an adorable little creature to take care of.

Megan had gerbils at that point so we both thought we knew exactly how to care for a tiny mouse. We fed it with a medicine dropper and kept it in a tiny box…kind of like Thumbelina. Everything was fine until we decided that the baby was too cold, since it didn’t have much fur on it yet. That’s when we had the ingenious idea of putting it under the piano light. It was a good idea, since we saw our dad’s do kind of the same thing with baby chicks. Except we put the light too close to the mouse and since the mouse couldn’t move it….ah….fried. We were horrified with what we had done and in somber state we named him French Fry and buried him in the pet cemetery (which was pretty large).

The End.

This and that

I returned yesterday from a week of bliss on the sea shore to a oven: 90 degrees and 100% humidity could very well be Hell come to Hobart. As I proceeded to cut the jungle by our house, also known as the lawn, I could feel myself melting. It is a very unnerving feeling for those of you who live in Alaska and beyond. What was worse was that a glance at the pond- which usually brings instant relief with the knowledge that you can swim in it even if you die from swallowing germ infested water-brought no relief at all. Instead the sight of yellowish pollen encrusted water was too much for even the dog to bear. Never-the-less, I survived as you see, since I said this all happened yesterday.

Speaking of dogs I had an enlightening thought come to me today. Actually it wasn't really enlightening, it just sounds better to say that it was. As I was weeding the garden AKA "the jungle"(huh, I just had an Amelia Bedilia moment. Why do we say weeding, when it is actually deweeding? I shall look it up in the dictionary.) I heard a funny sound come from Emma, our dog. It was kind of a strangled, muted bark of triumph(I like to think it was at least). I was puzzled; what was she doing? Eating a bumble bee. That is when the "enlightening thought that really wasn't enlightening" came to me. "What have we done!" I thought. "Here is our lovely English Setter, a bird dog and she's killing and eating bumble bees. Have be degraded her so much so that she is now a bumble bee dog?" It was a sobering moment. (hehe sort of) Poor Emma was never trained to be bird dog, so her entire existence has been full of using her talents in other areas. She is the worlds best "chase after the birds shadow" dog, as well as an excellent frog dog, and of course, the killer of the bumble bee.

Before I close this post I will tell you a funny story.
It was lunch time and Ruth, Rebecca and I were happily eating when Ruth all of a sudden doubled over and started choking. She was fine of course, she said she had choked on a piece of hair.:-) Becca was rather shaken though and so she started railing Ruth on why you should always let people know if you aren't choking. One of her options was: " You could at least say something like: I'm choking on a piece of hair, nobody panic."

Looking up weeding in the dictionary doesn't really tell you why the word is so. It just says " A plant considered undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome"...and "
To eliminate as unsuitable or unwanted. Often used with out: weed out unqualified applicants. " Oh well.

PS Please pray for Joel. He has come down with a cold of some sort and he keeps gagging and choking... it sounds horrible. Mom's taking him to the Doctor tomorrrow.