While weeding amongst the trees one day I kept hearing a tapping sound, about every 10 seconds. I looked around and noticed small half shells falling from the sky. They were my hazelnut shells! A squirrel was having a feast, fattening up for the winter, tossing the shells off the side of the nest, laughing at me as I dodge them.
Once the spring arrives and the sun is up when the alarm rings, Mr. Party's morning ritual slightly changes. Once the door to the back yard opens, rather than searching out the prime location to relieve himself, his first and most important task is to race as quickly as he can to the squirrels trees. Looking up into the limbs, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive squirrel, just as a child searches the sky for Santa's sleigh.
Today, an unfortunate event happened. As I was walking through the yard, picking up toys and sticks in preparation for tomorrow's big "mow" day, I bent down to pick up a mangled stuffed toy, thinking to myself, "they snuck one of these out here again!" Before actually touching the thing, I realized that this was not stuffed toy at all, it was one of the beloved squirrels that lives...um....lived in my trees.
Luckily the dogs didn't try eating it, and now I'm recalling finding it odd that the Nanny was intensely sniffing the area that I thought Mr. Party had marked. Well of course she was, she must have been trying to determine how much longer she had to wait until she had her own custom puppy-perfume-patch.
I do not like to think that Mr. Party actually caught a squirrel. After all, he's been chasing them for three years, he knows that if he killed it, he would have nothing to look for in the morning sunlight. All games of chase would come to an end. As I brought this up to the dad of the household, he reminded me that my mother-in-laws diabetic 20 pound cat caught its first bird last weekend.
I'm positive that this poor squirrel misjudged the distance between branches, and only fell to early demise. Mr. Party only kills on command, and so far, that is just big giant spiders that are only looking for a warm place to sleep. They do not know that I have a Newfie that will do absolutely anything to protect me and earn my affection. He would never kill for sport, that is not the kind of dog I have raised.
