"SQUIRREL!"

There's still life in the old girl yet,the four-legged one that is .  Last week, while working at the church, I took Katie out for a breath of fresh air, if you will.  We walked the patio and yard, she 'watered the grass' and then she spotted a ground squirrel.  Now she has absolutely no interest at all in the tree squirrels around our house, apparently she thinks because they live almost in our yard, they're family like the cats.  This was a different scenario, however, and she took one look at that squirrel and the squirrel took off.  "Flight elicits chase" my husband used to say, and my couch potato slug of a dog took off like Secretariat.  The squirrel flew down a hole next to the building with Katie literally on her tail.  I rather expect there's a squirrel in the churchyard that is now sporting a hairless tail; she was that close.  Yesterday I took her out again and she went right to the hole but, alas, no one was home.

Yesterday we went to the Feed Store.  I had ordered some glucosamine treats for her and they had come in so we were there to pick them up.  The young man working in the store was setting up a large gerbil habitat/enclosure on the floor when we got there.  Katie, feeling very much at home there, wandered the store, found and visited with a rabbit almost as big as she is and with the resident cat who quickly leaped up on the counter to do her visiting.  She then detected movement in the new enclosure.  She walked up to the cage and this fairly large gerbil did the same from the inside and they touched noses.  Then it hit her ... remember the movie "UP"?  We watched her stop, freeze, turn her head, and, I swear, we heard her yell, "SQUIRREL!"   She became that great animated hunter of all things rodent again and she tried every move she could think of to get inside that enclosure.  That put an end to our visit at the Feed Store.  We made our purchase and I talked her out the door.

In case you're wondering; she came home worn out and spent the evening sound asleep in front of the pellet stove, I rather imagine she was chasing, and maybe even catching, fast moving, sneaky little grey critters.