My Tangent – Grey Versus Rats

Morning,
A brief interlude from time-to-time from my work on my genealogy is an intermittent “yap, yap, yap, yap, yap…” Animals are funny, and ours at times keep us laughing most days.

There’s a squirrel in our backyard. I’ve named him “Grey”. I’m sure there are other squirrels, but this specific squirrel, Grey, seems to live life to torment the Rat Terriers; Tinker and Bella. He, Grey, uses the fence and the top of the screen enclosure as his highways as he scampers from the front and the back and across the side yards. And the Rats, Tinker and Bella, especially Tinker believe it is in their destinies to bark-away at Grey.

But the Grey must have ulterior motives. This rodent with the bushy tail actually torments, teases, banes, the Rats. He actually performs his acrobatics just close and near enough out of the reach of the dogs to whip them into a yapping frenzy.

Well yesterday, he just squatted himself on one of the fence posts, shaking his tail, teasing the Rats to try and get him. Grey just sat there. The commotion increased. The Labs; Tobi and Taylor, who usually ignore the fracas joined in. Tinker was yap, yap, yapping. Bella was bouncing around and screeching, in her high pitch doggy-type of way. Tobi let out a couple of woofs. And Grey just continued to twitch his tail, not moving an inch.

And then Bella began her scurrying back and forth, still bouncing. In her crazed fit of “let me at him… let me at him”, she bounced herself right into the swimming pool. Plop! And this was at the deep end of the pool, a distance from the stairs, 500 hundred fathom miles in Rat Terrier distance measurements. The next thing we knew, our swimming lessons had paid off. She nonchalantly, (it seemed nonchalantly), swam across the pool to the stairs and got herself quickly out of the cool water. And Tinker just kept yapping, while Grey scampered off. I can just imagine his little rodent brain… Gotcha!

Enjoy your coffee.

Jim