Wild Kingdom

Dash caught a live bird. One of those big mourning doves, the B-52 of backyard birds. He trotted around the hedge toward me, very pleased to have found such a neat interactive toy.

I tried to keep my cool, but I hate it when my animals stage their own Wild Kingdom episodes. I didn't fool him one bit. So he began a game of keep away. In the meantime, this poor terrified bird was flapping the one wing that was outside Dash’s grip.

He dropped the bird several times in response to my commands (okay, threats). Once it nearly made it over the fence to safety, but fluttered back down where my happy boy could retrieve the poor thing again.

I finally got him to drop the bird and back away. I stashed Dash inside, and went out to see about the bird. It didn’t look very good. His feathers were disheveled and his head drooped to one side. I had to walk away, and when I peeked again, the bird was sitting upright with a "how did I get here" look on his face. I went inside to get a clothes basket to put over it to protect it from the neighborhood cats, should it be recovering. When I went outside again, it was gone.

My To Do list just got longer. Obviously, we need to work on “Drop it!” and “Down!” as in, "Right Now I Mean it Mister and Don’t You Dare Move!"