Saturday 19 May 2007

Tufty's revenge

I have blogged about squirrel's before, and remarked on their potential for being as tough as Pirelli's best. I wasn't wrong. There is a Tufty (sadly of the grey variety) living in the saplings behind the wrecked milking parlour. It has regular tarzanic forays to hunt for nuts and who knows what else. It flirts with danger and flies through the air as if it was a winged beast. My young Bernese, Fenn, who weighs around 5.5 stones thinks they are monkeys. She is not far wrong. She stands at the base of a tree for hours wondering just how she might manage to scrantle up the trunk and do battle with the fluffy tailed rat. This morning the table was turned. Tufty decided to come aground. It sat in the long grass around the rotting buildings and must have exuded a scent that was the equivalent of Athena Pheromone 10:13 because Fenn was on the spot with her nose firmly pressed against Tufty's before you could shout "sit". There was an almighty screech and Fenn hurtled into the house. The squirrel had bitten her on the chin and drawn blood.

Two weeks later: "E's a stiff. Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies. 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory. 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!" This is an ex-Tufty. I found the dog licking the corpse. I bagged him and binned him, but not before his remains gave the hound the most horrendous dose of the squits.

P.S. apologies for the previous Tufty picture - I hadn't noticed that its nether regions had been tampered with. Is nothing sacred?

4 comments:

Omega Mum said...

I have seen a red squirrel - just the one, and by gum but they're beautiful.

Penny Pincher said...

Does your Bernese sit on your lap. We used to have an Irish setter weighed in around 6 stone and he insisted he was a lap dog. OOmph !

Penny Pincher said...

I've managed to get your RSS feed back on to my homepage - it fell off at some point! Tut. Modern IT such a nuisance. I look forward to reading back over recently missed blogs.

Mopsa said...

Hello thinker - no, they don't sit on my lap - unless I'm sitting on the floor in which case they lie all over me - but they do what is known as the "Berner lean" - they stand as close to you as they can, then sit down and lean 80% of their weight onto you so if you move away they are in danger of falling. That manoeuvre keeps you both in place for some while.