*WARNING* Severed bunny head photo*
ha ha ha.
Once upon a time The Food Lady had 4 dogs and a horrible, awful, garburator set of walking jaws attached to a fluffy, chubby body.
Who on earth is she talking about?
One morning, after she’d had her breakfast of coffee, and her pets had their breakfast of yummy turkey and yogurt, The Food Lady put her boots on over her pajamas and took her 4 dogs and the HAGSOWJATAFCB for a walk in the jungle of her 10 acre property.
As she played throw-the-stick with her dogs, she saw a crow pluck a little bird from a nest in a tree and drop send it hurtling to the ground. “Oh dear” she said to herself.
The HAGSOWJATAFCB saw it too.
“Oh shit,” The Food Lady said to herself.
She tried to outrun the HAGSOWJATAFCB to the baby bird, but she had only two legs and was wearing gumboots. The HAGSOWJATAFCB had 4 legs, and was free of rubbery footwear and got there first.
“Leave it, leave it! NO NO NO! Drop it! Cookie?” she screeched as she flopped and stumbled toward the baby bird.
Listen to the spaz in the gumboots.
Reluctantly, the HAGSOWJATAFCB obeyed (!!) The Food Lady and released the delicious morsel.
The Food Lady scooped up the trembling bundle of shit-encrusted feathers, because she is kind hearted like that, and decided she would carry it away somewhere to safety. Except that within seconds of scooping the baby birdie into her hand, a migration of bird lice started walking off of Mr. Shit Feathers and up her arm.
Because the Food Lady is a girl (and a potty mouth), she started screeching “Oh gross! Oh F*ck me, this is so gross!” and she deposited the bird onto the nearest windowsill of the barn,
and ran flopping and stumbling to the nearest horse trough to scrub off her hand, arm and for good measure, face.
The dogs kept a vigil on the windowsill bird.
Why aren’t I taller, dammit?
As she scrubbed herself – hopefully – free of bird lice, the windowsill bird made a break for it. Except the windowsill bird is stupid, and probably too covered in shit and lice to fly, so it just landed in pretty much exactly the same place as it was before.
Is that any way to talk about the almost-deceased?
Dexter was most fascinated.
But the HAGSOWJATAFCB picked up his little “friend,” which he had dubbed Second breakfast.
PUT ME DOWN RIGHT NOW!!
Oh shit oh shit oh shit!
And carried it away behind the tool shed, and ate it.
The Food Lady thought “Well, I guess it’s better than being pecked to death by a crow” and scrubbed her arms in the stocktank again.
The HAGSOWJATAFCB wanted to reflect on his enormously good fortune at having two bird-based breakfasts in one wonderful morning.
But the Food Lady had to go have a boiling hot shower and wash all her clothes.
We hope you enjoyed our little Monday story.
Actually, I think it totally SUCKED.
The Food Lady now has to go have another shower.
The End.
Andrea says
That’s the funniest thing you’ve written in years and you’re pretty damned funny on an average day. Excellent.
riosmom says
I have to confess that your (possessive pronoun) taking a picture while Twooie picked up the bird – as opposed to doing what I am not sure – bothered me at first but then I realized that taking pictures is what you DO and eating birds is what DOGS do. As for a happy ending, that often boils down to not having to know what happened, i.e., you call the dogs off and leave the bird for the next predator to get.
And your (possessive pronoun) response to Rhonda shows you’re (you are) a genius. I loved it! Loved the picture of Dexter, too.
The Food Lady says
“I have to confess that your (possessive pronoun) taking a picture while Twooie picked up the bird – as opposed to doing what I am not sure – bothered me at first but then I realized that taking pictures is what you DO and eating birds is what DOGS do. ”
And also that I was shooting with a telephoto lens, and was 40 feet away at the horse trough with a wet, bird lice infested arm :) The fact is, he was going to eat it no matter what I did – that’s what the TWoo DOES … eat other animals. That bird was nowhere near being ready to fly – I watched the crow pluck it out of the nest myself and drop it on the ground. Something was going to eat it, if not the TWoo immediately, than the TWoo later on, like the next time I let them out for a pee, or the crow that grabbed it in the first place, or a snake, or a coyote, or one of the cats that roam around these parts. I could have kept rescuing it from TWoo, or I could let the torture end and allow him to eat it.
If you don’t laugh, you go insane. I choose to laugh at the irony of my trying to save something that infested me with bugs, only to have it get eaten once I thought I’d left it somewhere safe. The only thing I DON’T allow them to eat anymore are already dead things they find, like the other two dead birds we found on that same walk, if they are decomposing, because I fear the aftermath on my rugs. *shudder*
I’m totally okay with being asked why I stood there and photographed it, but come on “your sick” is just, you know, lame.
Dawn says
I loved this story, no not because of the poor baby birds demise, but because it is the way the world works. Carnivores eat prey, sadly for the baby he was prey. So are the suasages- enjoy!
riosmom says
Thanks for understanding my initial reaction was not a criticism but a gut response to seeing a baby anything at risk. And I understand completely about your reaction to the bird lice on your arm and salute you for not hurling the bird away from you.
I rescued a white kitten from the side of the road once and only after getting it in the car did I see that it was CRAWLING with fleas all too visible under its white coat. I really wanted to stop the car and put it back out but couldn’t bring myself to do it so I raced home and set it up in the garage with a bed and food and water before going back to knock on doors to make sure it wasn’t owned by someone – though I knew it wasn’t.
Long story short: I took it to the Humane Society where it was euthanized because it was so sick, my car was infested with fleas, I was infested with fleas, and my two cats caught whatever the kitten had and were sick for a week. No good deed goes unrewarded.
Ruth says
Sheila would do that, too, gived half a chance – I feel your pain!
dp says
Last year one of five baby swallows in our garage got evicted from the nest. It sat on the garage floor and peeped pathetically, so I went and got it and tried to drown it. It obviously wasn’t going to survive, and was nothing more than cat/dog bait on the floor. But it took a really long time to drown — probably more than a minute. It fought against me with its little birdie feet, and its little birdie heart beat against my fingers for an unreasonably long time. In retrospect I should simply have let one of the dogs eat it…it would have been kinder.
Alice says
Ah, Dexter and his slightly crazed eyes! The poor, stupid, shit-and-lice encrusted windowsill bird reminds me of a similar one I found while out hiking. My older border collie, Emily, made short work of him. I appreciate your sentiments re: nature. Hard to stop a dog from doing what it instinctively wants to do, and BCs are darn efficient, whatever they choose to do. And sometimes….that’s eating things.
CarolG. says
Food Lady you are wonderful. I was needing a good laugh. Yes, dogs catch and eat any small animals they can. Dogs are gross – film at eleven. That being said, it is not like you fished the baby bird out of the nest!
Adrienne says
OMG Dexter is just about cross-eyed there! Didn’t he make a bid for second-breakfast at *all*?
It’s a carnivorous thing. I feed my pets raw meat. Over the last year I’ve come to enjoy the nice cruch of a good meal (for them). I’d be tickled pink if they went and caought their own food occasionally. Though there’s not much room for that in the city. Most critters aren’t suicidal enough to enter our yard. And the only place the dogs can run loose (five acres in the state park that is an off-leash area) is so heavily traveled with dogs that there isn’t much in the way of small, edible mammals.
Though I have debated, if they caught a squirrel in the backyard would I let them have it? I mean, have you seen the crap that city squirrels eat?
And for anyone who wants to feel self-righteous, you should look up the ingredients in that prettily packaged dog food. Then track down how it all got there. Mmm, yah. I like TWooie’s way much better.
Too bad for the bird but it was an hysterical post Food Lady!
wyldvetwyo says
While some would disagree, there are options for orphaned/injured wildlife, and they don’t involve ‘euthanasia’ by any means possible (drowning, feeding to cat/dog, striking it over the head). There are several wildlife rehabilitators that can be found who are happy to raise and release these animals. With chicks that have fallen from the nest the success rate is quite high for release odds. It’s arguable that nature is nature; but, I guess I draw the line at thinking that we should let our pets eat whatever wildlife they want to – where do you draw the line? At a fawn? Why? Because they’re cuter than a swallow chick? Dogs are not ‘nature’. They are not wildlife. Yes, they are acting like animals and who can help them, but letting them eat wildlife is not natural per se and it does have an affect on the wildlife, especially if everyone lets it happen. (Kind of like not cleaning up after your dog). I imagine this comment may not fall in favor, but as much as I love dogs, I love wildlife more and I think it’s a dog owner’s responsibility to make sure they respect wildlife when dogs are off leash. With that said, if the bird had not been taken to a rehabber it woudl certainly have died…and at the jaws of a dog are probably better than a raven. But I’d wager the raven needeed it more, calorie wise. ;)
Love the blog. Just had to add my two cents.
The Food Lady says
I don’t necessarily disagree – I volunteered at the wildlife rescue for years, and I did take the leftover baby bunnies from the WooTWoo Rabbit Feast to the wildlife rescue. When I lived in the city, I made an effort to keep Wootie from killing squirrels (not always with success, mind you) but this is my 10 acres, and therefore, the dogs’ 10 acres. If they catch and eat things on my property, so be it – it’s not like they are running around the neighbourhood eating cats, or decimating squirrel populations in the parks … but they do eat the occasional bird, bunny and rodent here at home and I’m okay with it. I am not leashing my dogs on my own property – this is our home, and they should be as free and unencumbered on it as they like. That’s the whole reason I moved here in the first place.
(They don’t kill deer because the deer don’t come onto my property when the dogs are out. But the coyotes DO eat the deer, and the dogs eat their leftovers. But if they did kill a deer, then I’d have lots of free dog meals for a long time, I imagine, and I am okay with that too.)
But really, what it boils down to for me is that nothing with lice is getting in my car. Blech. I did my best saving the bird the first time around, but after that there wasn’t much I could do. Nor was I super inclined to. Someone was going to eat it sooner rather than later, and in this case it happened to be TWoo. The dogs didn’t knock it out of the nest, after all.
I do agree he doesn’t need the calories though! But at dinner, when he got next to nothing, he *totally* didn’t agree with either of us.
Nancy from Portland says
Warning! More rabbit mutilation photographs!
[IMG]http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d70/ardeidae/BunnyMorris2.jpg[/IMG]
kelly says
Love it!!! This is the funniest post since “give me your underpants!”
nancy says
Wonderful post! But very sad: I laughed so hard I spit my bourbon over my screen, and that’s a waste of good whiskey.
Most baby birds get eaten by predators, or die of exposure, or simply keel over from too many parasites. Sad, but true. That’s evolution at work. Without a little death and decay, and evolutionary processes would have little natural selection to work with. Worrying about predation is like worrying about taxes–hard to avoid, but pointless in the long run. Like taxes, mortality from predation hurts, but without it, the entire system would fall apart. (This is what I tell myself when my pups zoom off after the bunnies, anyway).