On our little farm in Lone Oak, Texas, we have cattle, a horse, ten chickens and a little Aussie-Pom dog named Toby. I’m just going to say it: Toby is a chicken chaser. He acts a lot more like an Aussie than a Pomeranian. However, our chickens, as you can imagine, don’t much like being chased. Our chicken coop is against the barn a good 200 yards in back of our house, and in between is the cow pasture. Lori and I have invested a great deal of time attaching rabbit fencing to the cow panels that surround our back yard. We have put up 200 feet so far and every time it seems like Toby won’t get out…he does. We only need to put up about fifty more feet and the entire back yard should be completely puppy proof.
Toby has his own doggie door so he can get in and out of the house to go into the back yard. Yesterday Lori and I couldn’t find him in the house or in the back yard. Lori looked across the pasture and sure enough Toby was in the chicken coop, chasing chickens. We tried calling him, but he was having too much fun. So of course, I had to go get him. While I was at the coop, I checked their food and gathered eggs putting them in the pockets of my jacket. I tried to shoo Toby home, but he just laid down in the pasture to wait for me to leave so he could commence tormenting the poultry.
I finally called Lori on my cell phone and had her call Toby. (Toby loves Lori, probably more than me, and possibly more than chasing chickens.) Toby took off to the sound of Lori’s voice, and she got an unwelcome surprise. Toby was covered with mud from the recent rain, so he got a quick shower in the bathroom off of the mud room at the back of the house.
On my way back to the house our neighbor’s horse Dolly whinnied at me for attention at the fence. I keep treats in the big workshop for the horses, so I opened the door and grabbed some treats just inside. I petted and loved on the beautiful paint colored horse and gave her the treats. After I give her one, when I ask if she wants another, she will nod her head yes. It is very cute.
I went back to close the door but thought to put out cat food. Now I have to explain a little. Living out in the country I have been proactive about controlling the rodent population. I have put the black “Rodent Cafés” all around our house baited with rat poison. For the workshop, my son and daughter-in-law gave us a cat named Outlaw. He was about half wild anyway so ever since we move in in December, we have put out cat food and water in the workshop. I’ve never seen Outlaw in person but I put a trail camera in the workshop and we have seen Outlaw almost every day, along with two other feral cats who have volunteered to eat our food in exchange for their professional pest control services.
So back to the story. I went back into the workshop to put out food and water, and I saw some movement. I saw a cat on the dirt floor portion of the workshop. In almost three months of living here I haven’t seen a cat in the workshop except on pictures sent to my iPhone via my trail camera. As I got closer, I realized that what I saw wasn’t a cat unless you count a “polecat” as a cat. It was a skunk. As I slowly backed towards the door, I noticed that the skunk wasn’t acting right. He was walking sideways and stumbling around, and this was in the daytime. Classic rabies behavior. I closed the door and went back to the house. I went to get my 20-gauge shotgun out of my gun cabinet, but I realized that all of my shotgun shells were still packed away in a box in the workshop. I did however find my Taurus Judge, a five shot hand cannon that shoots 410 shotgun shells. It literally looks like a cartoon gun, but it was good enough to handle a potentially rabid skunk and it was loaded. I went back to the workshop, but the skunk was nowhere to be found. So, for now, Toby is confined to the house.
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