Greetings…

Most of you have heard me talk about the wildlife that comes and goes
in and around my yard because of living where I do. We have block
fencing on three sides of the yard, and view fencing on the back, so
we can see and enjoy looking out at the desert and mountains. While
the fence is the reason that Moose and Ginger don’t go around the
neighborhood knocking on doors pretending to be Girl Scouts selling
cookies. I can’t say it prevents visitors and “things” from coming
into the yard…

Luckily, the bug service we have has been very good and it’s rare that
one of those “nasty” things that walk around with a curled up tail
armed with a stinger wanders in. To be honest, I’m really not sure if
it’s the bug service or because a few Scorpions may have gotten tired
of running into a two foot mountain of Moose poop…

There are so many varieties of birds that not only come and go in and
out of the trees, yard and on top of the fence, they also perch on the
patio furniture and leave their calling cards all over the dang place
on a daily basis. Every day I have to hose  everything down. I
wouldn’t say I have more than the average amount of birds, but at one
point, I went in the house to look in a mirror to see if I look like
Alfred Hitchcock, just in case it was me attracting them and thinking
it was a casting call for a remake of The Birds…

This morning, I had an “interesting” thing happen and although I can’t
figure it out, I’m probably better off not knowing what caused what I
found…

I was out in the back with the poochies playing our morning “Splash me
Mama” in the hose. I played with them, squirted them, soaked them, and
then let them go off and chase each other since they were nice and cool
and of course, “frisky”…

I turned the hose off, grabbed a garbage bag and went around doing the job
that I have a Doctorate degree in…

Professor of Poop Patrol…

As I went from pile to pile and jumped out of the way every few minutes when
my ears would hear thunder and know, from experience, what ALWAYS follows that
sound…

As I moved through the yard, “doing my thing”, I looked down and saw
something that, at first, I didn’t know what it was, and yet knew
it was not the end result of a hearty meal. I got closer and bent over
to get a closer look, which brought the two nosey Nellie’s right next to
me staring straight down with me. Great Danes are so weird. You can get
then to stare at anything, (or nothing), by simply staring in any direction…

They stood frozen with the stare, just like their mama. Lying on the ground
was a dead Dove…make that “part of a dead Dove”. There was a body, but
the dang thing had no head. No, I’m not kidding and how do I know there
was no head and it wasn’t turned so you couldn’t see the head? Because
the three of us turned our stare a foot away to…you got it…the head!

Alrighty then, this is “unique” I thought. How did a Dove die in my yard
and a little more importantly, how did he/she lose their head, and of
course, the “mother of important”, WHAT took its head off and did I need
to run inside and put on a turtleneck for protection?????

I looked around and up in the air and noticed a few Buzzards flying around
which is normal. They always hang around hoping Moose and Ginger might
drop and feed them and their entire family for a  month. I didn’t see
anything else out of the ordinary and will probably never know what
happened and quite frankly, I don’t think I want to know…

I scooped the bird, (and its head) up and threw it into the garbage bag
and found myself wondering as I looked out at the empty desert how on
Earth our ancestors crossed the country without any of the luxuries we
all enjoy when traveling and running into any and everything that can,
well…take yer head off…

I felt a little guilt at sometimes complaining about “roughing” it in a
hotel that doesn’t have room service, then looked at the bag of poop
I was carting around and the guilt evaporated a lot faster than the aroma
did…

And some of you may be wondering how I was able to prevent Moose and Ginger
from sticking their noses in the bird or trying to touch it?

Before I went to scoop up the “Dove Fricasse”, I stopped, looked up in the
air and waited a few seconds. As Moose and Ginger stared up in the air at…

NOTHING, I quickly grabbed the scooper, put it in the garbage bag and had it
in the garbage can before they realized they had no clue what they were
looking at…

Human…1

Dogs….0