Ithacaview.com

Nothing endears you to a new place like making great discoveries. Daisy the puppy (now 15 weeks old) has discovered the culinary delight of deer poop. Obviously it is a delicacy beyond compare. So nice, in fact, it’s worth picking up in her mouth and transporting closer to the front door where she can eat it in comfort. We now have code words for this, "don’t kiss the dog!"

It was during one of her forays too far from the house in search of a new pile of poop that she made an even greater discovery. I was trying to get her to return in that intelligent way that all untrained pet owners do by walking or running toward the dog then stopping and calling their name so angrily that it’s a wonder the dog doesn’t run off for good. My plan was working so well that she was moving, but in the opposite direction per the scientific theory of angry owner - smart dog unattraction: age of owner times the velocity of the owner toward dog, plus anger of the owner divided by the age of the dog [((a x vt = ev) + ao) / ad]. Just as I decided that a food-based approach may work better, she became excited about a new discovery but by now I was heading back to the house for her food bowl.

Every dog owner knows that absolutely full food bowls attract absolutely but owners are often not as smart as their dogs and I wasn’t getting much attention from her while waving around an empty food bowl. In my frustration, I stormed toward her again. This WAS going to work, dammit! Suddenly she looked up and I could see this new thing in her mouth. It was brown, furry, and about a foot long. My mind automatically ran through a list of likely candidates. The best one being a discarded dog toy from the previous owner. The worst one was unspeakable.

I immediately regretted my litany of "dinner time!" and "hungry?" calls when she proudly ran toward the house with the mysterious fuzzy stick in her mouth. I yelled over and over again, "Not in the house! No! Not in the house!" and bolted toward the front door but only arrived after she was already through the door, up the stairs and standing in the kitchen. I pleaded with her not to drop it, whatever it was, but she had to drop it to get her food. So I am a moron. Enjoy the photos of the desiccated squirrel carcass. Someone asked me what I did with it after I took the pictures. Simple. I used a shovel to launch it over the stream next to our house and as far into the woods as it would go. My deer poop catapult now does extra duty as a dead squirrel launcher.