Thursday, March 17, 2011

Abandon hope all ye who enter here!

Kassa has been rather blasé about the whole "build a sun room" project.  Well last night his entire perspective on the issue changed.   You see, a sun room under construction is not just a place for sunning oneself during the day.  It turns out that it is also a bird trap.  I have chased about 4 or 5 out of my house since the process began.




Yesterday when I arrived home from work I let Kassa out of the family room to roam the house at large.  I heard some fluttering in the kitchen.  Kassa was on the job.  This was what those hundreds of hours of ball chasing was training for.  The bird was rather flustered at flying up toward the windows and floated down near the floor between attempts.  Clearly it had no idea of the speed of my boy.  Kassa pounced and snagged it out of the air like a dog to a bouncing ball.  I immediately yelled "DROP IT" and was pretty impressed that he did!  I scooted him off to the other room and went to see if his prise was just stunned.  Unfortunately Kassa's bite force was to much for the little guy and I watched him slip into the next world.  Kassa feeling extraordinarily proud of himself later when up stairs for some exuberant play with his stuffies.
You would think that birds would be on high alert and would have communicated to each other about the perils of the sun room.  This morning however I woke up to the sound of fluttering in my bedroom.  One of our feathered friends had snuck in the sunroom and, in efforts to escape the glass cage, had worked its way upstairs.  Kassa was asleep on his favorite monochromatic chair and watched me hopping around the room in my underwear trying to use a shirt to net this bird.  After four or five minutes of this he decided it was his turn to show me how it is done.  He got up, stretched, and then 3 rooms and 30 seconds later there were nothing but tail feathers sticking out of his mouth.  


The level of determination and intensity that he brought to the task dwarfed mine by one hundred fold.  Now I told him to drop it again, which he did eventually, but the level to which he consumed the poor little guy made it harder for him to give it up.  Now secretly, or perhaps not so secretly now,  I am very proud of him.  He caught these birds that had invaded our home.  He dropped them when asked and I didn't have to chase the fool things around for 20 min.   Kassa has become ball hunter, ball herder and, in as many days, now is a two bird dog.  Happy days are here again!

5 comments:

Greyhounds CAN Sit said...

Oh dear, while I really hate my dogs killing things you do have to wonder at the stupidity of some animals and birds, don't you?

Why do possums have to lie on the ground so Frankie can catch them when there are thousands of perfectly good trees they can snooze in?

You'd think the sparrows would send messages to not enter this house as there's an expert sparrow hunter living there. Although I guess if Kassa has already got them then the message can't be sent!!

houndstooth said...

Does Kassa walk with a little more swagger in his step now? I hate seeing dogs kill anything, but I also know that they are very efficient at it usually!

We had the world's stupidest rabbit living under our bayberry bush last summer and fall, and Morgan was on a mission to get it. She got close, even came back out of the bush, still attached to the leash, with tail fur in her mouth, but did that scare the stupid rabbit away? Noooooo! Why are prey animals so stupid sometimes?

jcp said...

You know.. I think there was a bit of swagger there. I don't like him killing anything either. At the same time I was pleased with his response to the "drop it" command. I realize this post was slightly morbid .. but it is a reminder of the nature of dogs as well as the stupidity of birds :).

Unknown said...

Oh no.....

!!!

Hiking Hounds said...

Wow, what a great hunter! I hope the sun room is coming along.