I slept through this pre-sunrise scene, but Tom saw Jack bound off into the woods, heard the panicked squeals wind down to death whimpers, then found the critter, a young raccoon, and cleared it away.
Jack is an animal.
As natural as this is, it’s nevertheless disturbing. I like to believe that Jack is all blow and no go—that he likes chasing squirrels but wouldn’t know what to do with one if he got it. (I’m trying not to think about cats.) Evidently, he knows exactly what to do and he seems to have killed for killing’s sake, since he didn’t eat the coon.
Raccoons are rough customers and we are glad that Jack got the better of it rather than vice versa. I once saw a cat that mixed it up with a coon and it was not pretty, nor did it ultimately survive. So I suppose this is less disturbing than the day one of our other dogs (RIP, Homer) ate a baby bunny. Poor Tom saw that, too. He called me to report it and sounded really shaken. It was the last time we ever saw any rabbits on the property—and we used to have lots.
The other day on a walk, Jack and I were ambushed by a couple of killer Chihuahuas on the loose. To his credit, Jack kept cool, although his ears signaled all kinds of discomfort and irritation. Those yappy little bastards were hardly put off by my ultrasonic dog trainer. Their yips and yaps were pretty ultrasonic themselves. But this little zapper is the greatest for making sure loose dogs keep their distance. I even give Jack a quick zap now and then, when he gets aggressive towards dogs in their yards. He does not like it one bit and it seems to be training him out of his fence aggression.
At any rate, I hope this morning's carnage doesn’t turn Jack all bloodthirsty. We have friends who keep chickens and when one of their dogs killed his first chicken, it changed him forever--unhinged him a little. Now all he wants to do is kill more chickens and they have to keep him in a dog run most of the time, whereas he used to the run of the property.
If the raccoons are smart, they've moved out of our yard.
Jack was very proud of himself, of course.
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