Poor Sparky. The sand man is beating him to death.
Yesterday, Sparky barked at the patio door. He only does this in exigent circumstances. Once when wild turkeys mounted a major offensive to establish a foothold in the backyard. Another time when a deer was grazing in the yard. Sparky pisses all over the place, so deer must be stupider than rabbits. Or deer don’t consider Sparky to be an existential threat. They are right about that, but for Sparky’s dignity, we won’t admit that as a possibility.
In the recent case, it was two rabbits grazing on clover in my backyard. This year, I have an abundance of clover and an absence of hawks, so the rabbits are on the ascent.
I have nothing against rabbits. In my youth, my sister had a rabbit named Hasenpfeffer that was very friendly. In college, my colleagues and I had a rabbit named Travis. I don’t recall why we had Travis, but I liked the subversive nature of RA’s keeping a rabbit in the dorm.
Sparky loves chasing rabbits, and since it’s no danger to him or the rabbit, I indulge this physical activity.
Here’s where rabbits aren’t so slick. They think that if they stay still, nobody can see them. In a maintained yard, their stupid ears stick up like Winston Churchill saluting the crowd.
In British culture, the gesture on the left, with palm facing away from the crowd, is the FU gesture. The gesture on the right indicates “V for Victory”.
It seems like the rabbit ears flash the, “Fuck You! I’m eating all of your precious clover, and you can’t do shit about it.”
I release the hound.
Sparky is configured for smelling, so gets into a sniffing huff. His eyes are configured for night vision, so he has mostly rod cells that pick up motion. The stupid rabbit remains still and goes unmolested.
The rabbits have not considered that Sparky has allied himself with a human who cares nothing for clover, but takes umbrage at their cheeky insolence.
Sparky is motivated and half-way trained to understand “Rabbit”. That command indicates that he should stop inspecting the ground like a duffer looking for a golf ball, and should look up, shut up, and stay close. When he locks onto the rabbit, I release him to the chase.
The rabbit eventually goes into the brush, but not always as quickly as possible. Sparky chases, ducks into the bush, gets his leash tangled up, and gives me a bark to indicate he needs an extraction.
Yesterday, he had five good chases. For the rabbits in the backyard, we went out the front door and slid along the wood shed to get the jump on them. It didn’t take long to spot a few more. The rest of the evening, Sparky was all coked up on adrenaline and kept telling me how he was taking the fight to the rabbits. Today, the ol’ boy is depleted.
Out of a sense of duty, when I got out of bed, he did too. He made it to his crate, and went into a 60% sleep stupor. Sparky did manage to go outside to take a piss, but went back to stupor without eating breakfast. He declined my invitation to have coffee on the deck. When I offered a car ride, he roused his lazy bones.
In the car, Sparky tried to hold up his end, but without enthusiasm. His efforts to keep his eyes open reminds me of going to a physics lecture after working all night on dorm security. “I’m not sleeping.” It might be more like working all night as a cleaner at Burger King, and falling asleep while mopping the floor.
We could do that when we were young, but Sparky, my good man, nobody asks that of us now. Just sleep, little puppy, and I will take care of everything.