So I'm hanging out in the garage Sunday night, relaxing with a cigar. The dogs are out in the back yard, sniffing each other's butts (or whatever they do to amuse themselves), and I hear a moderately audible "ka-chang" sound.

I peek out the back door of the garage to see both Jake and Bandit dashing madly to the right.

"Hmmm... must be a pedestrian walking by with a dog".

*ka-chang*

Dogs dash madly to the left.

"A confused jogger?"

*ka-chang*

Dogs to the right, and I see that they're chasing after a rabbit.

"Ah... well, he'll find a hole under the chain-link fence and be off to freedom."

*ka-chang*

Dogs to the left.

"Ah... apparently this rabbit is particularly stupid, and keeps bouncing off the chain-link fence... Still, as long as he doesn't run behind the shed so that the dogs get on either side of him..."

*ka-chang*

Dogs to the right... on either side of the shed... behind which the rabbit has run.

*Grrrr!*

*squeak!*

*sque-!*

"Ah... the hand of Darwin... or in this case, the paw..."

Jake wanders from behind the shed, rabbit in mouth. Bandit bounces around excitedly, knowing that SOMETHING fun just happened but not really sure what (she's a Border Collie - she just likes herding animals).

Jake plops down by the garage door, oblivious to the rain. He likes to catch & kill critters, but he's not much for eating them. As far as he's concerned, that rabbit is just another fuzzy chew toy - albeit with a broken squeaker.

And like a fuzzy chew toy, it's for just holding in your mouth... until someone offers you a tasty pig's ear in trade.

Good boy, Jake.

Posted by: Harvey at 06:27 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
Post contains 307 words, total size 2 kb.

1 One less rabbit in the world... good boy Jake! *grin*

Posted by: Teresa at November 27, 2006 09:15 AM (5UR9t)

2 Harvey, I hope you ate the rabbit. Not as good as shooting them yourself, but hey, rabbit meat is rabbit meat...

Posted by: Tennessee Budd at November 27, 2006 10:40 AM (wXSVh)

3 Back when I had my chow Shadow I used to occasionally find parts of stuff I thought might have been rabbits... or cats... not sure

Posted by: Graumagus at November 27, 2006 10:52 AM (8P21O)

4 BTW, was the "Hug him..." reference from ELmyra of Animaniacs??

Posted by: Graumagus at November 27, 2006 11:13 AM (8P21O)

5 LOL! Harv, you should send that one to saveToby.com as a visible reference for the PETA freaks. In the meantime, you know your dog has freaking kewl skillz to catch a wild bunny. Paw of Darwin or not, them buggers is fast. May El-ahrairah have mercy on his fuzzy soul.

Posted by: shimauma at November 27, 2006 12:30 PM (oH+XM)

6 Wow. I'm glad Happy Dog is too slow to catch most anything.

Posted by: vw bug at November 27, 2006 12:34 PM (FXZgB)

7 Grau - Actually, it was a reference to one (and possibly several) old Bugs Bunny cartoons. The Abominable Snow Rabbit http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054593/ for sure, and possibly a few others. The quote probably isn't exact, since I was doing it from memory, and Google mostly turns up other people quoting it from memory, rather than pointing to source material. Shimauma - He's caught other stuff, too. Sometimes with help, sometimes solo. There was a woodchuck that Bandit helped him with, a couple stupid birds that forgot that flying helps avoid predators, and one baby rabbit that needed to be taken out of the gene pool because it was too dumb to get while the gettin' was good. Bug - Jake is normally a lumbering lummox, but he's also pretty good about choosing his angles for cutting off prey during a chase. He's also excellent at delivering that killing neck-bite. Good thing he likes the cats :-/

Posted by: Harvey at November 27, 2006 02:14 PM (L7a63)

8 Holy cow! Way to go Jake!! My dogs could so use some of that vim and vigor...

Posted by: Richmond at November 27, 2006 02:45 PM (e8QFP)

9 Rabbit - it's what's for dinner!

Posted by: Elisson at November 27, 2006 02:46 PM (CJmNQ)

10 Zoe would have loved to been in on that! Give Jake a hug for me. What a good dog. I have eaten rabbit, and no, it doesn't really taste like chicken. Why does everyone tell you that? Frog legs don't taste like chicken, either. Or possum. Dang.

Posted by: pam at November 27, 2006 04:13 PM (l6NIn)

11 My fat dog sticks to picking up dead, squished squirrels from the road and prancing home proudly with them.

Posted by: sticks at November 27, 2006 05:53 PM (Ak7WA)

12 ... Jake rocks... you need to bring him down here to Tennessee and teach him to catch squirrels...... and cats.....

Posted by: Eric at November 27, 2006 07:41 PM (NlzwQ)

13 Harvey, Bring Jake down to Indiana. We have a rabbit epidemic down here. Good Boy!!!

Posted by: Jerry at November 27, 2006 10:40 PM (ZWD2Z)

14 Eric, I've got Tennessee's squirrels handled. I'm buying a new shotgun this evening.

Posted by: Tennessee Budd at November 28, 2006 11:28 AM (wXSVh)

15 Cody only ate the baby ones. I guess he was just a finicky eater. :-) Yeah Jake!!!

Posted by: Tammi at November 28, 2006 01:20 PM (Bitcf)

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Bloggrandson-in-law =HC= of House of Zathras mentions this quirk:

I put icecubes in my milk.

And there's more milk-icers in the comments.

For years, Beloved Wife TNT of Smiling Dynamite has mocked me mercilessly for doing the same thing, treating me as though I was the only person on the planet capable of such deranged behavior.

Looks like this particular fetish may have a larger following than anyone has ever suspected. Come on, you closet milk-icers... fess up.

By the way, =HC=, please consider getting your own blog. Writing talent like yours needs to be showcased, not hidden in comments sections. Read this & think it over.

UPDATE - 10:30 PM: I'm not actually a freak, because I've got an excuse. Four years on the Enterprise where the milk was usually served at room temperature. And keep in mind that - all too often - the temperature of the "room" was also about the temp of the part of the Indian Ocean we were floating around on. Say about 90 degrees.

Warm water, warm milk, warm pop, warm bug juice, warm beer (if we were out to sea long enough)... I developed an obsession with making sure that drinks that are supposed to be served cold are served at the temperature God intended, i.e. just above freezing.

So I'm not really a freak, just scarred.

Posted by: Harvey at 07:55 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Post contains 241 words, total size 2 kb.

Blogson Mike the Marine of From The Halls To The Shores commented:

I hope you've got a good excuse for getting into the "three post rut." -Simpsons, Currency, Love. Repeat.

Conveniently, I do.

As mentioned previously, Beloved Wife TNT of Smiling Dynamite is the Personal Representative for her late mother's estate, and I've been helping her get things in order.

"Things" meaning mostly cleaning up a house packed with 30 years of accumulated crap, and maintained with some iffy housekeeping & home repair skills. Probably not the WORST maintained home I've ever seen, but anyone who's ever moved after a long stay knows how neglected certain areas can get, and what an effort it can be to get them looking nice again.

The major issue being that we needed to get the house shined up & ready for sale before snow season.

The good news is, we finally finished last week. It's just a matter of getting the house sold now.

Of course, there's still the issue of finding space for all the crap we hauled back to our house - currently packed into boxes crowding all over the living room floor. That'll be eating up time at random intervals.

And we still have to get the leaves raked at the estate house.

Aside from that, though, I should be able to dedicate more time to blogging at Bad Example. I closed down Alliance HQ and Forward This Email, so I'm down to just posting here and at IMAO.

Of course, I'm still working on the Love Notes book, too. I've gotten all 365 notes written, but there's editing & polishing to do.

So, in theory, I should get caught up on my posting this week or next, and be able to post more than just "the rutting three" thereafter. Plus I'll be able to start reading through my blogroll again.

Meanwhile I figured that having three crummy posts a day was better than posting nothing at all.

We'll see how it goes from here.

Posted by: Harvey at 07:38 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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