Yesterday, The Yellow Dog disrupted nature in a big way. He looks guilty, doesn't he? He went with my husband to the hay field to check for limbs and other stuff that could damage the hay mower. We will start cutting hay this week.A turkey was nesting in the grass. The Yellow Dog, curious as always, ran the hen off the nest, before Mr. W. could get him reined back in. The hen did return to the nest before dark, but something, hopefully not the Yellow Dog, damaged almost all the eggs and most likely killed the turkey sometime during the night. There were lots of feathers but no carcass.
My husband feels responsible because the huge disruption probably alerted all the coyotes, bobcats, skunks, owls, and foxes in the immediate area to the unusual location of the nest. Yes, if The Yellow Dog hadn't found the nest, it would have been destroyed by the hay mower because we wouldn't have known it was there, but I still feel that we disrupted nature in a big, negative way.
I am mad at him, but The Yellow Dog is still an amusing part of the family. You never know what he will do next. He plays with the children on the swing. He can actually pull them on the rope swing. He accompanies them on all their solo nature walks. In fact, you can barely leave the house without a doggie escort. I do like to have him with him when I have to check spooky noises in the barn or pasture at night not that he actually protects anything or anybody.
Once, not long ago, some dogs came on our property. The Yellow Dog barked and barked and ran out to scare them, but they didn't immediately leave. The dogs started for The Yellow Dog and he turned tail and ran to us for protection. The same goes for the cows. He takes great pleasure chasing cows, but if any of them turn and take a stand he cowers.
So he is not much use as a cattle dog. He isn't any use as a chicken protector, since he has a history of playing too roughly with them. He doesn't help with honey frame building. He falls asleep on the job.
Also, he also doesn't like to take a bath. As soon as he is clean he finds a way to escape and runs out to the barnyard and wipes his wet self in manure. Even though he usually stinks, either because of the manure or skunk, we can't help ourselves. We just like him, in spite of his mischievousness or perhaps because of it.
He can run like the wind.
3 comments:
I am of your mindset...you just can't help but love a dog like that. I've got too similarly bone-headed useless mutts here...but I'd be lost without them.
We had a dog like yours, but Woody was also a thief. One morning I found him in the back field sleeping on a lounge cushion- he'd dragged it down the road from the elderly neighbor's back deck. It was so embarrassing to return it. Another time he had an old pinata with about 50 feet of rope attached, never found its owner, tho.
He's beautiful, too.
Is it because we think and reason, and because we've domesticated dogs, that you're not considering yourselves or Yellow Dog to be integral parts of nature? I think the Native Americans thought of themselves as another part of that whole, didn't they?
I suppose it's only natural for a person like you, who takes such pains to tread lightly and live sustainably, to feel a sense of loss over the demise of the turkeys; however, I'm not sure you have just cause to be angry at Yellow Dog.
Not that I was pleased, the spring Ivan took out a ruffed grouse, but I respect that a cat will do what a cat knows how to do, and while I lamented the loss of a grouse, I've adored Ivan for every mouse& mole trophy left on my back stoop. He's also cuddly sometimes. And he's a brilliant conversationalist. He does not, however, push children on swings or keep them company on nature walks :-)
The good with the bad with the good ... right?
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