Black Doggerel

spring has sprung, and the suburbs are alive with foxes busily and noisily making more foxes. it makes after-dark dog walking into a bit of an extreme sport. in fact if I marketed it right I could probably charge local thrill-starved teenagers to walk the fuckers for me.

Woodbury Avenue, 11.30pm. It's pouring with rain and ankle-deep in wet oak leaves, and the dogs and I are walking, like we do. A mouse inexplicably shoots out of a pile of leaves in the road and tries to hide under Spike.

Mouse: OH YAY A BIG THING TO HIDE UNDER!

Spike: EEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!! *teleports four feet straight upwards, lands again, registers mouse by his feet*

Spike: HOLY SHIT IT'S ALIVE! PANIC!!! *dives behind my legs*

Mouse: HOLY SHIT IT'S ALIVE! PANIC!!! *dives behind fence*

Squish: *oblivious to collie dramaz* MY POINTER SENSES ARE TINGLING! *points mouse with great, if slightly wary enthusiasm*

Spike and Mouse: Er, you didn't see that, right?

Me: LOL.

there is a tawny owl calling outside in the big ivy-covered dead tree at the end of the car park. I'm stoked that it's there and even more stoked I recognised it from its call XD

My special bird dog found me a bird :D

It was a fledgling blackbird, huddled in a little ball on the pavement on our late dog walk down Woodbury Avenue. Spike and I both missed it entirely.

It was almost fledged, strong and uninjured, so I didn't mess with it except to pick it up and move it about two feet from where Squish found it, so that it was in a hedge on the safer side of a garden fence instead of on the actual pavement. Good luck, bird.

...two people in party clothes were ringing my neighbours' doorbell just as we were leaving. HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY.

obnoxious dog-fox habit: pissing on any random dog-smelling objects they come across, such as empty plastic bottles that have been collied and abandoned.

obnoxious Spike-dog habit: playing with random interesting objects he comes across on walks, such as the same empty plastic bottle he played with and abandoned yesterday. Spike likes to be at eye level with his humans as much as he can so playing means bouncing off my chest with object in his mouth until I either play tug or throw with it or ignore him successfully.

so that's why I now smell of fox piss. repeated scrubbing with lavender soap has not entirely shifted it yet.

The daffodils are out, the squirrels have arrived in force, the foxes are fucking and the other morning I was nearly hit in the head by one of two wrens, so busy fighting over tree rights that they never saw me at all. The grass has taken on a shine as new shoots start insinuating themselves among the old crap that's been there all winter, and Squish dog wants to eat it all. It's officially spring here.

One should never go shopping when hungry, yet it's often the only time I'm motivated enough to bother. So I end up buying way more than I can easily carry home, not to mention more strawberry and white chocolate muffins than any sensible person ought to need. Also discovered Italian ground coffee in 1lb packs for 50p each, which is insane, so I had four packs as well as the muffins and the dogs' chicken parts and pork ribs.

Our Asda has automatic self-checkout scanners, but I refuse to use them. They issue orders at you and catalogue your shopping in a synthesised voice. When it says "Two point four kilos of baking potatoes" I can't stop my brain hearing "Exterminate!" and frankly, it freaks me the fuck out. So I joined the queue on the only human-operated till, despite the woman in front of me who was either recruiting an army or feeding a family of teenagers. We got talking about the bargain coffee and the strawberry muffins and she ended by offering me a ride home, which goes to show you should always follow your instincts in the matter of shopping queues. She won't read this and I thanked her a lot at the time, but I'll thank her here again: Blonde lady with the SUV and the teenagers, you made my night.

My mother's friend Ossie died unexpectedly this week. He used to work the checkout at Asda as well - sweet guy, but utterly incapable of working a checkout and a conversation at the same time. He made shopping with my mother wryly entertaining, as I'd stand there listening to the two of them gossiping for what felt like hours while the queue behind us grew steadily longer and grumpier as their frozen food melted, unmoving. You have to admire someone who attains that level of cheerful, oblivious unhurriability even when it irritates the fuck out of you.

This rambling, mostly pointless post is dedicated to his memory.

Spike has just discovered that hedgehogs cannot be herded either. They. Just Stop. Moving. And Spike's signature move, the Cat-Herder's Nosepoke, has some serious disadvantages in the hedgehog herding department.

Squish, always a sensible dog, was far more successful at pointing it. I think he could have stayed there pointing it all night if I had let him.

I really need to remember to bring my camera even on short dog walks.

I keep thinking I should post to let everyone know I didn't die.

( Winter Thing )

( This tumult in the clouds )

( Earworm )

( Annoying girlparts )


( Meme )

Sometimes people are really bloody kind. Above and beyond. Thank you.


In other, back-to-normal news, Squish pointed and flushed a pheasant in Big Park today. It was awesomely perfect; the explosion of feathers and the clucking and whirring, the rapt look on his face - and best of all, the way he came when called immediately afterwards, to receive much praise and sausage. I love my spotted dog.

Reasons why I hate summer that have nothing to do with bitching about excess heat.

1. I can't wear my coat. This means I have to carry poo bags, lumps of sausage and rubber balls in the pockets of my trackie bottoms (Colonials: that's British for sweat pants). My coat has zippered Spike-proof pockets to keep balls in. My trackie bottoms don't. Today he pickpocketed the ball while I was busy leashing Squish, so we had the fun of walking to the park with him in I HAS A BALL mode. Spike has to have low-friction soft rubber balls because he's already worn a quarter-inch off his canines from tennis ball abrasion; so there's the added fun of him dropping the fucking thing every ten yards and having to lunge after it like a Great White after a surfboard, jerking me and Squish along behind him like forgotten fishing tackle.

The other day he attempted to pick my pocket on the way home from the park, caught his muzzle in the pocket, and dragged my trackie bottoms plus underpants down to my knees on Woodbury Avenue. That was even more amusing.

2. Squirrel season. My street is lined with huge mature oak trees and every damn squirrel for miles around arrives here in spring when the leafbuds become edible, and stays till the acorns are all eaten. First they spend a while doing happy squirrel mating chases all over the place; then they make more squirrels, and right about now is when all the stupid new young squirrels are learning what dogs are by dashing right in front of mine. If I had terriers we'd have killed many by now - as it is, they've just nearly killed me with the yanking and the barking and the 'splodey.

3. Fox season. They've been here since about February when they started fucking noisily in the dead of night and setting the dogs off. Now they're all in hunting overdrive for their newborn or almost-born cubs and they're every-fucking-where. It's rare for me to walk dogs after dark without bumping into one, and the other night there was a heavily pregnant vixen hunting moles on the lawn right underneath Spike's lookout window. They excite the dogs more than squirrels and cats put together and garnished with sausage. Every hair on Spike's back stands on end, he hurls himself at the window and barks like a ship of the line's full broadside. Squish is possibly even more disturbing; he is a hunting dog by nature and foxes make him bay. Unfortunately he bays soprano, and the noise that comes out of him sounds like a pig being tortured. The two of them going off at once has to be heard to be believed.

So yeah. Roll on winter please.