I'm sorry to say that the resident farm dogs are no longer with us. After much agonizing, we decided to make a good faith effort to try to let them stay, but they blew it immediately by attacking our dog. They were summarily dispatched. Our dog was terrified, but otherwise okay. He managed to run off into the trees to hide, which presented another problem because we couldn't find him for hours and didn't think we'd ever see him again. Needless to say, we were extremely relieved when he came tiptoeing out of the underbrush later in the evening.
Verde, I'm sorry - I know this is not the outcome you'd have preferred, and truly it was not the outcome we'd have preferred either, but they left us with little choice. I'm sorry it had to end this way, but their future just wasn't looking good no matter what happened.
The big upside to the day came in the early evening, while we were sitting out in the yard. We happened to look out over the pond, and saw one of these come in from the opposite side. It came in really slowly, landed briefly and then took off again. Really incredible.
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Oh, that's sad, but had to happen. I get so caught up in romanticizing "nature" that I forget how things go down (your evil friend's comments on the previous post, he seems to be pretty well grounded in real nature!).
ReplyDeleteWe have a pair of feral cats (who graced us with five totally feral kitties) that live around our house. They eat birds and scavenge what they can. It's also nature - and a massive reproductive mess. Did you know one pair of cats and their offspring can make 420,000 kittens in 7 years??? Sort of like a cat-virus unleashed. I feel vaguely and diffusely guilty about this.
Yowza - that's a lot of cats!
ReplyDeleteEvil is a relative term. Good can also be evil, sometimes at the same time. It is truly a shame we have to kill creatures like that, but we have overbalanced nature by breeding them and not having another animal or force of nature to control their population.
ReplyDeleteI also remember when I was a kid, the revolving door of strays that were dumped on our porch when we lived in the outskirts of Dallas/Fort Worth, when it was still country and not sprawl. We seriously had to eliminate at least one a month! I guess those folks just wanted to pass their problem to someone else, or they figured the yokel country folk would just take them in, because they have lot's of dogs anyway. No Beuno! they all got offed by my parents because otherwise we would have been over-run.
Neither does it help that I have spent most of my adult life in wilderness areas like Alaska and New Mexico. Life is truly different there.
Very funny! I thank you for calling me "your Evil friend"! That is too cool!
Oh Dear, don't worry about me! I'm sure that was a really difficult decision and difficult thing to do.
ReplyDeleteFarm life is hard that way sometimes. I don't find butchering enjoyable and even once had to put down a beautiful colt that was lame.
I love the blue heron. We have a lot of them near us in Central Minnesota. They are incredible!
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you dealt with a sticky situation the only way you could. I'm glad your dog is okay!
Lisa in MN