“Hey Rodent, here I come!”

Olive had squirrel for breakfast this morning. Well, almost. She came within a fur’s breadth of enjoying a nice gamey meal. As I opened the sliding glass door to let her out of the house, she shot over the threshold and across her pen with the speed of a rocket-propelled torpedo. The lazy, arrogant, stupid, or just careless rodent almost didn’t make it out of Olive’s pen. It frantically zig zagged across the lawn and scurried up the chain link fence. Olive was racing behind the squirrel, kicking up mud while she tracked it to the end of the fence and then opened her mouth and snapped at its quite furry grey tail just as it crested the top rail. Olive was so close, that I was simultaneously stunned and grateful that she did not turn around with it dangling from her mouth by its tail like a bowling trophy. I wasn’t in the mood to beat it to death with a miniature steel shovel because it bit Olive. As Olive trots back empty mouthed, I do feel badly for her. I wonder if this makes her feel unfulfilled. In my ignorant home sapien manner, I try to ease her disappointment by praising her: “GOOD GIRL OLIVE. YOU CHASED THE STUPID RODENT AWAY. I THINK THAT ONE WAS PAST ITS EXPIRATION DATE. GOOD THING YOU LET IT GO.”