Saturday, April 05, 2008

PREY-DRIVE

My career choice of working at the utility company has at least given me this: the blazing ability to dig squirrel graves. Lickety-split, it's dug and done.

I don't know whether to be (somewhat) angry at my boys or proud of them. I think I'm leaning towards the former but, what the hell, they're dogs. They are hunters. They are hardwired with a prey drive. Today, it reared its head.

They were outside and I wandered outside to have a smoke and drink some coffee and call my friend, all while enjoying the beautiful weather. I walked outside and Lou and Ollie ran over to me, tails wagging, dog smiles on their faces. I saw the raquetball on the ground, so I picked it up and faked a throw at the tree and waited for Lou to realize that I hadn't thrown the ball. (Oliver's eyes, on the other hand, had not strayed from the little blue target. He regarded it with a look of Okay, jackass, I know you still have it. Are you going to throw the damned thing or should we maybe just wait for a new ball at Christmas?) Lou turned to me, then, and I chucked the ball up in the air--straight up--as high as I could.

Lou looked the opposite way until, hearing it strike the ground, he turned around and streaked for the ball. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something greenish-yellow fall from the tree and hit the ground, about ten, fifteen feet from Lou and Oliver. I had time to think to myself, Huh, was a tennis ball stuck up in the tree, too? before something else plummeted from the branches, about twenty feet up. The brown object hit the ground and twisted and I realized it was a squirrel.

Lou abandoned all thoughts of the raquetball and spun on a dime to close the distance before the squirrel could shake off the shock of falling--relatively-speaking--twenty stories. It wasn't even close. Before I could get to Lou and Ollie, they'd batted the rodent to the ground and had sunk their teeth into its side. "Back!" I shouted. Lou turned to me, the squirrel dangling from the side of his mouth and shook it like a bag of popcorn. The squirrel flopped like a wet noodle.

Eventually I got the dogs by their collars and pulled them from their quarry. As I held them back, I looked at the squirrel. His eyes were wide open and he was breathing rapidly. He tried to gain his feet and get away, but the commands weren't making it from his brain to his legs. His back left leg came into my sight and I saw that his inner thigh and groin area had been torn into flaps of furry red. His grayish muscle poked from a gash near his tail. The kid wasn't looking too good, and I knew what I'd probably have to do.

First thing, though, was to get the boys inside so that I could deal with the situation in a more-subdued atmosphere.

I came back out and sat down in the chair and regarded the unfortunate little guy. His respiration was shallow and quick and his equalibrium was fucked. I was hoping that he was simply stunned, that the wound on his leg would heal over time, that my dogs had not become cold-blooded...um, dogs. It was not to be. As I watched, the squirrel regained his feet and staggered over to the old oak tree. Though he was walking like a drunk, I was hoping that he wasn't too messed up. Though his leg was fucked up and I figured his back might be broken, I was silently cheering him on. I really did not want to have to finish him off.

Aloud, I said, "Come on, kid, you can do it." And he nearly did. With only one working hind leg, he started up the tree and headed for the nook. Right before the nook, he lost momentum. His left rear leg slipped and he was left clinging to the gray-brown bark with one front paw. He reminded me of a cliff-climber, all swaying in the moutain breeze, one handhold the only thing preventing certain death. The kid didn't make it. The bark broke and he fell backwards, doing a lazy backflip before his head connected hard with a gnarled old root. If he looked like he was in bad shape previously, this was the icing on the cake. He lay in a psuedo-fetal position, breathing shallowly, nothing moving but his eyes and his whiskers and his side...barely.

Enough.

Saying a quick silent prayer and telling him aloud that I was sorry, I scooped him up in a flat shovel and walked him over to a bush near the back fenceline. I, for whatever reason, didn't want anyone to see what I needed to do. His body twisted unnaturally (broken back) as I slid him off the shovel underneath the evergreen bush. I went back to the shed and selected the sharp spade shovel. I wanted--needed--to be able to quickly put him out of his misery. No more pain, man. I practiced on a couple of nearby sticks--snap--and then I walked over to the fallen squirrel and, without pause, slammed the point of the shovel down on his neck. Snap.

I closed his eye with a small stick and then dug about three feet down and lay his body in the hole. I put the half-eaten Granny Smith apple in the hole next to him. [Imagine, giving your life for a fucking apple.] I grabbed a piece of concrete from the side of the house and gently lay it down over his body and I finished filling in the hole.

I walked back inside and Lou and Oliver sniffed at my hands, almost as if they'd been expecting me to bring their toy back in the house with me. No such luck. They got dog biscuits, instead.

EDIT: You know what makes this sad story even more sad? I took the boys out, just now, to see how they would do sharing their playground with a squirrel graveyard and, as I walked out to the table and chair, I heard a chick-chluck-chluck from over my head. 'Twas another squirrel in the aforementioned nook. As I watched, it scooted from the nook and up the branch a ways, whereupon it sat, tail twitching, staring down and chattering at me. I sat there for a good ten minutes and it sat there, too--didn't move an inch. It just sat there and burned holes in me with its beady black eyes, raining squirrel curses down on me. It makes me think that I killed its spouse or something. God, is the natural world really this Disney-esque? Damn squirrel is giving me a guilt trip.

12 comments:

Heather said...

Stupid Disney. I'm really sad for your little squirrel friend :-( (Then again, I see roadkill and cry, so...yeah. Am a wuss.)

Anonymous said...

oh, Adam, that sucks. I am so sorry. You did what you had to do, with merciful intentions.

Anonymous said...

i am so sorry. i wouldn't have wanted to trade places with you for anything. i know how hard it must have been for you.

Adamity73 said...

Heather: I think it's *good* to be a wuss, within reason. =o)

Hi, Alexis! The squirrels around here are nutty! (No pun intended.) Remember that one squirrel that stayed on the wire for a good twenty minutes that one time? The one that I got pictures of? Odd. And, yeah, this sucked. I didn't really have too heavy of a heart, I just felt bad for the guy. Really bad. It sucks to see beings in pain, no matter what kind of being they be. And, yes, the intentions were most definitely merciful.

BooBoo: See above. :-P The worst thing--well two things--one, that he *almost* made it up the tree and two, that damned second squirrel. I honestly think that they were of the same pack (or whatever) and that the squirrel was looking for its family memeber. Kinda sad, kinda sad.

Dana said...

Awww ... what a touching story. You are right - dogs are hunters - they did what instinct told them to do. But what a heart you have - really - I can't imagine many people taking on the responsibility of the squirrel in the way you did.

Adamity73 said...

Either way, the squirrel was going to have to be put out of its misery, Dana. I think anybody would do that. But I'll tell you this: I wasn't about to just throw it in the garbage like a sack of potato peels--poor kid deserved more than that. Call it "dog-owner's guilt."

But thanks for the heart comment. :-)

Melissa said...

It's their na-ture (Craig?), but that didn't make it any easier to deal with the squirrel they caught. You did good.

I think Willy would have caught a few by stalking, but Pete runs wildly to catch up and his jingling alerts the squirrel or bird. Willy has given him more than one disgusted look.

Adamity73 said...

Yep, you nailed it, Meliss. It was Craig and he would have been talking about their Lahso-Apso (spelling), Mindy. What, Craig? Theitr nature is to be a whiny little dust mop who like to play with their teef? :-P

Poor Willy, having to "put up" with Pete. (Petey's a good boy, though.)

Frank said...

I hate unintentionally killing something. Granted, I hate killing anything period, but there's something about not even expecting it that makes it even worse. I was skipping rocks at a pond with my dad when I was about 8. One of the rocks I threw skipped particularly far and hit a baby duck in the head. It just rolled over and its two feet thrashed around in the air for a few moments and then it was dead. The mother duck and the other ducklings just circled it a for awhile and then kept swimming. I tell you, I cried for days.

M@ said...

Those little guys are smart. I had a friend who kept rats and I remember one old rat squinting at me from 20 feet away. It was making eye contact. It was curious.

Me_Again said...

Don't worry I got yo back!

Adamity73 said...

Day-um, Frank! Killing baby ducks! What kind of a monster *are* you?! ;-) But at least there is this: the mother duck and her innumerable ducklings didn't mind it too much, apparently. There's always that. =o) BTW, welcome to my bli-zog.

Matt: Is your friend's name Willard? You should have told that old rat to "stick it where the sun doan shine."

Meegie: Thanks, babe. =o)