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Ahh, a subject near and dear to my heart. I lost my
little rat that I had hoped would grow up someday to sabotage the competition. A
sad day indeed. Not to fret, there are plenty more where he came
from!
I joke about our greyhounds being so simple and
all, and seriously, they are. However, they are excellent rat eliminators.
One night while feeding the horses, I saw movement
on top of our chain link fence. It was a rat about the size of a medium cat. He
was running back and forth along the fence and the dogs were running along the
bottom of the fence whatever direction the rat went. The rat was trying to jump
either onto the roof of the barn or into a tree. As he was heading toward the
tree I kicked the fence as hard as I could to try and knock him off.
The rat jumped for it. He looked like a flying squirrel, so graceful and
floating.
Unfortunately, he missed the tree and landed right
in Shamus's mouth. Crunch. All I could see was one tiny foot and a big 'ole tail
sticking out of the dog's mouth. A few more crunching sounds and the rat was
gone. One down, 3 million to go.
Another time, I moved a box of blankets and found a
whole nest of rats. Now I have a thing for babies, no matter what kind they are.
But before I could ooooh and ahhhh over the tiny, fuzzy creatures, Shamus had
come behind me, scooped about 3 or 4 up in his mouth and , crunch! He must of
thought they were appetizers.
Greyhounds will eat just about anything. One time
they ate a bag of birdseed. We didn't know it until the next day when we noticed
them straining to poop and howling in agony. I ran outside to see what was
wrong. All three were walking, dropping their rear ends and howling and
screaming. Then I finally saw the cause of pain. The bird seed didn't digest to
well and was coming out in some very large odd shaped groups. They made it
through that with only minor hemorrhoids. Dumb dogs.
On days when they won't eat thier dog food, I know
we have knocked down the rat population. The greyhounds favorite chant
is:
I loves to eat dem
mousies, dem mousies I loves to eat! I bite dey tiny heads off, and nibble on
dey tiny feet!
Lisa Salas, The Odd fArm
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