Treed

Last Saturday morning I heard a squeal as I passed by a yard that has a dog, and looking at the dog, I realized that he had caught a squirrel. As I watched, the squirrel got a chance to escape, and it was able to climb into a small tree. However, it clearly had been injured by the dog because it was not moving right.
Ten or fifteen years ago we had a neighbor whose dog also lived in a fenced-in yard with a small tree, and it frequently caught squirrels stupid enough to come into the yard. Like this dog, it seemed just to want to play with them, but did not realize that its play was a bit too rough for the poor squirrel. Sometimes the squirrel would eventually escape, and sometimes it would not. However, the dog could sit for hours watching the squirrel in the tree.

If the dog had just jumped up, it could easily have grabbed this squirrel. For some reason it never did. An hour later I passed by and the squirrel was half way up a larger tree, so it must have had an opportunity to make a dash for freedom. However, instead of going to the top of the tree, it was only half way up, so it clearly was not functioning well.

Speaking of dogs, have you noticed that some of the dogs that bark when you go past their yards are actually quite friendly. Their barks say, "Stop and talk to me. Be my friend." Other dogs are saying something quite different: "You are in my territory and I want to bite you." And then there still others that are saying, "I am a stupid dog and I have no idea why I am barking at you."

I do not know how this dog/squirrel episode ended. However, no one would notice one less squirrel. There are probably a lot more squirrels than people in Rensselaer.

(I met and talked to the owner of this dog. He said that a neighbor boy feeds it a Twinkie each morning on the way to the school bus. Maybe the dog caught the squirrel because it was missing its morning Twinkie.)