Merck and Craige and Geese and Thunderstorms:
Old Dogs III
“Courage can sometimes
be a matter of habit and habits can be broken.”
A thunderstorm banged in on us two days ago. Very common around here; that is bad weather
– sometimes really bad weather – slamming in from seemingly nowhere. And our old
guys became terrified. These
warriors, canine warriors, whose job, for years, have been to harry Canadian
Geese. To chase off very large birds
that can be quite aggressive when challenged.
Seriously. I have had numerous
confrontations with Canadian Geese. Not
good to piss ‘em off.
These really big birds are often used in some places in
place of guard dogs. They are very
territorial and when they settle on a place being theirs, they don’t give an inch to trespassers. When I was in the
Army and stationed in Germany for a year, my wife and I lived in a 400 year old stone farmhouse. This was a sort of farmhouse
with three floors. The rooms had been
broken up into apartments, with the landlords living on the ground floor and
yes, dairy cattle barned up in the basement.
It was built into a hill, so you couldn’t see the floor where the cows
were, but that floor opened up onto a pasture behind the building.
Now on the other side of this pasture, about two hundred
yards from the house, was a place where we were required to take out burnable garbage. Separated wet
from dry garbage, as it were. Then we had to burn the all the dry
stuff. This pasture was guarded by a
half dozen of these geese. And those
dudes were never happy to see us.
Sometimes they were asleep or feeding or something, we could sneak
sloshing across always gloopy grass and cow pats, big giant cow pats
(shit). Once we set our little pile
aflame though, the smoke would drift about and sure enough out came the
feathered SS.
A full grown goose can break a human bone, like a finger,
pretty easily. And, those floppy looking
webbed feet do have some pretty sharp endings (claws, almost) and they can
scratch you up pretty good. I have heard
they can break your arm, if they catch a good hit with their wings. Short tempered and mean! And, fast!! A lot faster than you
might think for a flying bird that looks clumsy on the ground.
Merck and Craige, in their prime took on lots of these
feathered pit bulls. Dashing into their nest areas and giving the
geese “what fer!” Not backing down an inch. All day every working day. Currently we live
on pretty little pond (really maybe only about three acres of water), tucked
back off a dead end dirt road. It has a
wetland marsh area of a couple additional acres, a number migrating flocks of geese, herons
and some other birdy types – at least one pair of eagles – tend to use this
pond Spring to late fall.
A couple times a year a few dozen of these various flocks
will hone in on our pond.
There seems to be flight path directly over our house. When the trees fill in during the warm
months, there are few places around our property where you can get a clear view
of the skies. It’s pretty deep in
shadow, most of the summer. Which is
nice, since it keeps the heat down. But
… Now, even in their nearly blind and deaf dotage (old age), arthritic wobbly
gaits, whenever they hear geese migrating overhead, they go a bit nutsy
aggressive. I doubt, if their eyes
weren’t clouded over, they could see them from the ground around our place
anyway. Even if it’s just sheer
instinct, both of them know it when they fly in. And, it’s chase
time.
The point being, these dogs, though they be really, really old dogs are not cowards. Massive cows, sheep or really mean big birds
are just a challenge to them. Lightning
and bit of thunder and … total wimps.
Strange to me. It’s also strange
how each one of them show their fear.
Merck, the older dog by two years, crawls under any piece of furniture
where he can fit. He doesn’t shiver or
show any surface fear other than a kind of skyward slant to his eyes. More like, “Don’t know what that noise and
bright lights are all about, but hey! Don’t like it!.”
Craige, the younger, slides up to nearest human and glues
himself to the side of their leg and shivers – shivers like all his fur has
been shaved and he’s stuck in the snow.
Border Collies also have this peculiar habit of always
having the tip of their tongue hanging out of the front of their mouths. Always. Just about an inch of the tongue tip sticking
out of closed mouths. Not open panting
or anything. Little pink tongue tip in
the middle of a pitch black furry dog face.
The overall effect is, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I am thinking about it. And, it’s scarin’ the piss out of me!”
To be continued …
dalepeterson.us
Just published “Twelve
Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar
disorder”
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