Today is a rainy cold dark day, the dying shreds of Hurricane Somethingorother. I took Sage for a walk in the rain- because no crazy tied up neighbor dogs would be out waiting to cuss us out. I did not put on his prong collar, since no one was out the flat martingale would do the job. As we went along we met a squirrel on a stone wall next to the road. We were ready for it to flick away, and Sage just looked at it and trucked along at a normal pace- won’t get fooled again, he said.
Go on, run.
Anytime now.
We walked on.
To our surprise it stayed on the stone wall, facing us and began to scream a loud threatening wail. Not the squeak of a victim. The screaming piqued Sage and he lunged, I held him but the squirrel only hopped to the next rock on the wall and kept wailing at us. Sage gathered himself and lunged again, grabbing the squirrel by the shoulder and delivering three brisk shakes. The squirrel thus dispatched, he dropped it in the leaves and prodded it. He looked around, perfectly at ease, no residual blood lust, no hunger, no fire in his eye. We were right in front of his nemesis Daisy’s house, where normally he is anxious at best worrying that she will threaten him, but I have never seen him so comfortable near Daisy’s house as I did then with his killed squirrel.
Sage carried his Squirrel
So now we had a dead squirrel. I waited a bit to see what he would do and tried to think of what I had ever read about dogs eating squirrels. Reilly has eaten rabbits, mice and voles, neither dog will eat a mole, Reilly kills snakes but doesnt eat those either. Neither has ever actually caught a squirrel. I thought about this really aberrant squirrel behavior- why the screaming? why not run? There was a telephone pole right there and several trees. This was clearly perhaps the General Woundwort of squirrels. Was it defending something? Was it sick or crazy?
I stood in the rain again with my dog, to see what he would do. This story began to feel familiar. He had no problem with me checking out the squirrel, and did not guard it. After a few prods and sniffs, he lifted it, dropped it and looked around, then he seemed to make a decision, carried it in his mouth and pointed his nose homeward. I went along with him.
For the second time I was happy the neighbors were spending their rainy Saturdays inside. He walked with a very businesslike air, not proud, not piqued, just holding his squirrel, the tail hanging down, swinging with his burly stride. He was calm. Sage is not normally a comfort-carrier like Reilly and her fleeceys: he retrieves, he catches and he tugs. He did not invite me to tug his squirrel, or offer it to me.
He carried it all the way home and instead of going to the porch, he went to the back gate to the dog yard. I suggested the porch and rang the bell to get Jeff down here to see. Reilly came to the door - excited by the doorbell, and carrying her Kong. I cannot imagine her surprise to be there with her kong gift and see Sage on the other side of the glass with a squirrel gift.
"I brought you this."
Jeff laughed- “Did he actually catch that?” Yes, I said, but it was a very strange squirrel. We let Sage in the backyard and he dropped the squirrel and appeared to lose interest in it. I removed the tail from the squirrel as a trophy, but later did a bad job of removing the bones and so ended up with three pieces of tail drying in a salt rub in the basement. I will follow through the salt-curing as my brother instructed me (I rang his house and got my sister in law: “Sara, how’s it going? I have a dead animal question…” Ah. “Hang on I’ll get the expert…”) just to see if I can manage to salt a hide.
We brought Reilly out on leash to allow them to discuss Sage’s experience but to prevent her from stealing it. It was clear now that Sage was not going to eat it, and I felt terrible in a way that he had wasted a kill, but on the other hand it was clearly not a normal squirrel, and on a third hand I was kindof proud of him, and on the fourth paw I was glad he didn’t eat it because I wondered what inside it had made this squirrel so crazy- a sickness Sage could contract? (later research showed that while squirrels CAN technically contract rabies, they do not tend to survive the attack of a rabid biting creature and therefore rarely live to carry it.) The squirrel was fat and strong and had no apparent previous deformities or injuries. Perhaps it had been bounced off a car that morning and was acting nuts due to some blunt head trauma?
Sage was happy to see Rei and immediately greeted her joyfully, gamboling up to her and jostling her lightly like they do to each other in play. The two of them sniffed around the garden and seemed uninterested in the squirrel, Rei is not interested in things she hasn’t killed herself, unless they are stinky and its from a rolling point of view. I walked Rei around the perimeter and Sage returned to the squirrel. After a few minutes, he again picked it up and carried it to the edge of the yard and scraped a hole under the canoe in a little ditch I had dug to drain water from the yard. I watched him from a fair distance but while walking, not staring. He was caching the squirrel.
Sage dropped the squirrel in the waterfilled hole and then began pushing leaves over it. He next stuck his nose in the water and pushed water onto the squirrel. I could hear him blowing the water out of his nose with each flip of his thick furry wet head. He did this repeatedly for several minutes. I brought Rei inside and waited for Sage to be satisfied with his cache. I then let him in and dried him off. To my surprise he went in to the art studio and ate the bowl of kibble Reilly hadnt eaten for breakfast. Neither dog had been interested in breakfast that morning, preferring to hibernate on the dark damp day.
I have never seen Reilly cache, but I remember thinking it was cute when Sage cached an old rawhide scrap under a bush in the front yard when he was a pup. I went out to raid the cache and get rid of the squirrel. He did a good job, I bent down and ducked under the canoe but could not see it beneath the leaves and water. I pushed aside some leaves and picked it up. A wet dead squirrel- it had a good weight, I thought. I stood up and hurled it (Hurl a Squirl?) it as deep into the woods as I could.
