Interesting Interactions with Animals

[nekosensei]

Yesterday, doomsey and I ended up walking a dog. "Huh?" you might say, "but nekosensei, you don't have a dog." Well, I found the pooch-- a Yellow Lab-- wandering around by himself just as I was heading out for my three mile walk. I asked a lady with two kids in a stroller, who so happened to be walking by at the time, if it was her dog and she said no. The dog started wandering away and I thought I would have a hell of a time corralling it, but it ended up wandering into my backyard because it wanted to say hi to my next-door neighbor's dog. So...I latched my gate and trapped it in my backyard until I could figure out what I was going to do with it. I looked at his collar and saw that he only had a rabies tag. He didn't have any tags with a phone number or an address. So helpful! I tried calling the number on the rabies tag, but they were closed on Sundays. After consulting with my neighbor and his kids, they determined that the doggie belonged to a family that was kitty corner to our house. They loaned me a leash and I walked him over there only to discover that their dog, Zach, was accounted for. She thought it was another dog named Chief, who lived two houses down, but it turned out not to be Chief either. Really? How many families with Yellow Labs were there on my block? The lady who owned Zach, was very helpful, and she was looking up a number to call when finally, the dog's owner pulled up in a green car and said, "hey! That's my dog!" Finally! Turns out that the pooch in question was named Kelly and she belonged to a family a few houses away from us. By the time the guy showed up, I was starting to worry about what we were going to do with him if we couldn't find his owner. doomsey said that we could have kept him at our place overnight, but I didn't want to do that because of all Cosette's health problems: I didn't want to stress her out. Zach's owner, who had about three dogs of her own, had offered to take in the lost dog if we hadn't found the family he belonged to. I'm very happy that it didn't have to come to that though.

Saturday was bird day. That day, I was planning on picking up the seeds that my maple tree had dropped. I stepped outside my back door just in time to see a baby sparrow fall from my porch onto the steps leading to my basement door. Those steps were on the steep side and I was concerned that the baby bird would be trapped on the landing in front of my basement stairs. I grabbed a dust bin for one of my brooms and a piece of plastic-- I think it was the bottom of a flower pot. I used the plastic to get him onto the dustbin. (I didn't want to touch him because I didn't want my scent rubbing off on him: I heard that birds usually abandon their young if they smell like humans). Then, I carried him up the stairs. He tried to get away from me at first, but once he saw that I wasn't going to hurt him, he sat quietly on the dustbin and blinked up at me. So cute! Once I was up the stairs, I released him under one of my evergreens, where I knew a pair of sparrows kept a nest.

And another funny thing happened on Saturday. Some robins have been making a nest in my maple tree out in front. I was using the leaf blower to remove leaves from my driveway. I stopped my leaf blower when I noticed that one of the robins was getting awful close to me. I swear, this guy wasn't afraid of anything! He ran along beside me and made a bee-line for the maple helicopters that were sitting in a big pile in front of me. He scooped up a couple of bugs before scooting away. This happened at least two or three times over the course of an hour.

nekosensei: *blows leaves*
Robin: *runs up beside nekosensei*
nekosensei: *shuts off leaf blower*
Robin: *runs into the pile of leaves* *peck peck peck* *scurries away*
nekosensei: *turns on leaf blower and starts blowing more leaves into a pile*
Robin: *runs up beside nekosensei
nekosensei: *shuts off leaf blower*
Robin: *runs up to the pile of leaves* *peck peck peck peck* *scurries away*

At one point, I called doomsey from my cell phone. He watched from the living room window and laughed at the little exchange going on on our driveway.

One last story! Last week, I was tired out from studying from my German class so I decided to try meditating. Don't laugh! It works for me! I discovered back in college that I get a lot of energy from meditating for twenty minutes or so. I'm also discovering that it's very helpful when you do a lot of creative work like writing. Well, meditating when you have a cat poking at you doesn't always work so well, as I discovered. The next time I do that, I'm going to have to remember to shut the door. Eventually, she left me alone, but when I finally opened up my eyes, I saw her sitting there and looking at me with a "what the fuck?" expression on her face. Great...just what I need. My cat is being all judgmental about me meditating!

And now for some links!

On Friday, almeda introduced me to Lovely Listing.com. I have decided that I want this house! And the description on this house in Germany amused me greatly: "Achtung! Ich habe vergessen wie man Deutsch sprechen. Wo ist der Inspector auf Safety? Warum die Deutschen nicht haben Bannisters und Railings in ihre Häuser? Ich glaube que no es seguro, especially if you gusta la drinky-poos like I do." The ich glabue que no es seguro part amused me greatly.

These next two are from last week: a Volvo with an anti-crash system has a leetle accident (blame doomsey for the link) and...this last one is heartbreaking...Delta airlines loses a dog in the Mexico City airport (link from popfiend. I really hope that some employee swiped the dog to keep as a pet and that it's not dying in a locked cage somewhere. Seriously...if I *ever* had to fly anywhere with my pets, I would much rather take them on the plane with me as carry on-luggage. You can do that, right?

Comments

[lark_ascends]

D'awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!! The robin! So cute!!