Animal Issues

I’ve had a lot of dogs in my time but I’ve never had one that buried stuff. I’ve had dogs that chew. I’ve had dogs that dig. I’ve had dogs that demolish everything in their path. But no dogs have ever buried anything in my yard. I really thought this was some tall tale only seen in cartoons and read about in books.

Today I saw a dog bury something and it was funny as HELL.

The dogs were wound up today. The little dog got angry at the meter reader and could not stop barking. This caused Jake to bark. From there, they just barked at the snow or their own shadows or the oxygen tank or whatever. It was annoying.

I finally split them up because I could not take it any longer.

During their separation, TW and her mother had lunch. Jake was locked in the back of the house with me but the little dog was in the front of the house. Jake did not want to be with me because I do not eat. So Jake barked and whined and tried to knock the gate over. TW took pity on him and tossed him a couple of short rib bones. He wasn’t interested. He wanted to be in the front of the house with her.

The little dog, however, was very interested in those bones and tried to knock the gate over from the other direction to get to the bones.

Eventually, TW removed the gate and tried to urge the little dog out the back door to use the bathroom. Jake ran to the front of the house, little dog grabbed a bone and ran to the back. TW let the little dog out and he stood there chewing on his bone rather than using the bathroom.

After awhile, he buried the bone in the snow. But when he saw us all watching him, including Jake, he unburied it and started chewing on it again. Then, he buried it and TW finally convinced him to use the bathroom and come in.

Fast forward a few hours and the balmy 32 degrees has caused the 6″ of snow on the slide to slip down onto the ground in one glorious long slab of snow. Right on top of where little dog buried his bone.

Little dog is not happy about this development. There’s to much snow for him to dig it back out. He just stands there and looks at the spot where he buried the bone… and barks. While I stand in the house and laugh at him.

So the bird. Lyra is her name but I just call her bird. Which is better than what I call the rat.

When RJ is not here for long stretches of time, the bird moves to our bedroom. I think I like this development even less than I like F*** Elvis in here. (See I told you calling Lyra “Bird” was better than what I call the rat.) I really am not a bird person and while I did find it amusing to hear the pissed off little baby voice coming out of Jenn’s mouth when she heard RJ got a bird, “No fair, you never let me get a birdddddddd!!!!”, I’ve really disliked having this creature in my life. I particularly dislike it when TW gets her out of the cage and she flies all over the darn place and I really dislike it when she does this while I’m in a phone meeting. I also dislike it when the bird hisses at me while I”m getting clothes out of my dresser. The hissing obviously means the bird dislikes me as much as I dislike it.

But. The bird also seems to appreciate me enough to learn things from me.

It now can whistle, like I do. It also makes some really weird noises that I could not place but have grudgingly decided to admit sound surprisingly like laptop keyboard noises – and mouse clicking noises. So – I’ve taught it to whistle. I’ve taught it to make keyboarding and mouse noises. Now I am attempting to teach it music. Music that RJ likes and that I like.

I’m trying to teach it to sing or whistle “Emotional Girl”. She definitely loves the music. She will sing and make every noise she has ever made and flutter her wings and whistle non-stop while it is on. She also seems to appreciate Terri Clark’s version of “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” but the Zevon version puts her to sleep. I may dislike the bird, but at least she has good taste in music – or maybe she just appreciates a woman who looks really good in a hat.