What a Difference a Day Makes

In one day everything I know to be true can change, just like that. Saturday was summer, Sunday a chilly autumn day. Yesterday I was terrified of birds, today, squirrels. Not that I was madly in love with the quasi domesticated rodents yesterday, or the day before, but they rarely made me shriek. I've been shrieking. Do not hang peanut butter encrusted pine cones on your back porch. Squirrels see this as an open invitation to hang out, our back porch is now the VFW hall in the small town world known as Squirrel Land. And our bouncer, Eleanor Roosevelt, generally a fan of chasing the bushy varmits down in the front yard, sits and stares at them through the screen, not one scary beagle hunter sound to be heard.

Just last week our formidable hound dog caught a squirrel out in the back. While I did not admit to the neighbors that the lifeless figure was the result of Mrs. Roosevelt's pure bred need to capture and shake, I suspect that they might have known. I was horrified, shocked that my lovely and kind dog, our Eleanor who allows Mary to climb on her, hug her (until she is an odd beagle blue), and sleep on top of her, could shake and snap the life out of another creature. And yet it is true, she's a hunter, a hound dog in her true form. That is, unless the reward is on the back porch, then she is quite content to lay in the sun and watch the squirrely beast, and all his friends, romp about in their new party room.

How about a bark, or a howl Rosie? Don't feel like you have to really exert yourself by overpowering our guests, but perhaps you could intimidate them, just a bit. Really, you'd think that after last weeks attack the squirrel community would have issued a neighborhood watch: Attack Beagle in the Area, Beware. Instead I issued an invitation to them: Open House, please join us for sunflower seeds and peanut butter on the back porch. BYO.