adventures in the front yard

[cleolinda]

So... Sister Girl was having a giant screaming fight on the phone. This, I decided, was an excellent opportunity to take the dogs outside for a walkie-walkie.

You will recall that our deck was torn down and rebuilt. It's finished, but they're still building the fences: no backyard for dogses. So I put Lucky and Sam and Meko on their leashes and troop 'em all outside. And we're sort of lolling about out there, grass coming in green, all the trees blossoming, pretty pretty spring, blah blah blah...

"Bok bok bok bok bok..."

I look over, and there's a rooster in our yard. Keep in mind, now, that I live in a suburb of Birmingham. Nice schools. Good shopping. No livestock.

"Bok bok bok bok bawwk..."

It's a black rooster with a brown head and wings; its tail is black with an emerald sheen to it.

"Bok bok bok bok bok..."

The poms are sort of stupidly nosing in the bushes on the other side of the yard. Lucky, the spaniel, starts straining at his leash and growling. He sees... his nemesis the Shaggy Cat, lying in the yard on the other side of the driveway. The rooster is ten feet away, even closer than the cat, and he doesn't see it at all.

"Bok bok bok bok bok..."

So I've got one dog (on a leash) struggling to get at a cat, and two other dogs (on leashes) on the opposite side of the yard. The leashes have those big bulky blue handles with the retractable leash-wires, and it's hard to hold two in one hand; sometimes Sam can pull it right out of your hand. The bok bok bok bok bok is starting to sound like the ticking of a time bomb, and I'm standing there like a condemned man about to be quartered by four runaway horses: Cat! Dog! Cat! Dog! Leash! Bok! CAT! DOG! DOG! DOG!

"Bok bok bok bok bok... B'KAWWWWWWWWK!"

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

It's on--the dog sees the rooster, the cat sees the rooster, the rooster sees the cat, the dog jerks back to the cat, the cat is on the run, the dog is chasing the cat across the street, the little dogs bring up the flank yipping all the way, and the dogwalker is yanked bodily across the yard over a dozen bushes, two trees, and a parked car. Once the Shaggy Cat has escaped behind the flower pots across the street--out of sight, out of mind--I'm able to drag Lucky back home (growling and whining all the way, because You Have Not Seen the Last of Him, Shaggy Cat!), and the poms come running whenever I yell "Treat!"

The rooster is still out in the front yard. The last time I saw him, he was strutting across the front step where the dogs could see him through the glass door, just to piss them off.

"B'KAWK!"

Comments

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Eh, I actually lead a very, very boring life. It's all in how you tell the story. :)

[jewbacca1897.livejournal.com]

So true, so true