mulch

I spent much of the day avoiding my house, running errands and running away from the hot box (my apt). Anyway, I made my way over to the Apostle house for some play with the puppies and to loll in the AC for a while. Jess and I had a good day of getting stuff done around the house and running a couple of errands. Good day, but relatively uneventful. Until I went to get in my car...

Jess was walking me out, as she normally does, and noticed her flower bed looked...off?

"Looks like some thing has been in the flowers again!"Jess said. This is quite a concerning issue, as the rabbits in the neighborhood recently chewed through Sarge's perimeter collar fence. I looked over to the flowerbed and did notice the mulch around the flowers was a little messed up. Now, disclaimer: nor I or Jess would normally take note of whether the mulch was in disarray or not, but we had JUST watered the flowers not 2 hours ago. But the mulch just looked kind of raked together, not like the burrow the bunnies had dug two weeks ago.

"Yeah, but there isn't a burrow" I replied.

Then our lives changed forever.

I put my foot forward to kind of smooth out/stomp down/redistribute the mulch. And stepped on the prairie dog's head.

I screamed. The prairie dog shot (backward, mind you) out of the mulch. Jess started to run. There was general chaos. In the confusion, we (the humans) ended up further away from the house and the prairie dog ended up on the porch. Then, he started spazzing so bad, he resembled a 4 year old at Disneyland, hopped up in pixie stix.

He raced back and forth on the porch at top speeds. He tried to scale the walls of the house. He jumped and threw himself against the door repeatedly. It was so shocking, that Jess and I had no idea what to do. Except laugh really hard.

To all of you thinking, he must have been so scared! or you heartless fools! I dare you to witness such a thing and not dissolve into a complete piles of giggles.

Finally, compassion took over and Jess moved us in front of the garage so he didn't feel trapped. Once we were hiding from him, we peeked around and watched him some more. At this point, his adrenaline must have started to slow, as he was just standing with his little paws against the glass...then he would crawl over to the door and put his paws up.

It was adorable. And very pathetic. My two favorite things animals portray. Meanwhile, Sarge and Maggie are inside the house. We could see their shadow racing back and forth. Jess then took my phone and crept up the walk to take a picture or two...

As you can see, the prairie dog is now turning around. I think he was planning his next move. Unfortunately, there is no documentation of the next move. Because he decided to charge directly at Jess. I swear to you, he FLEW off the porch. Staring straight at Jess, vengence in his eyes. My guess is he was getting retaliation on the potential exploitation that would come from the antics. I suppose he was justified in that. Anyway, Jess turned to run back to our "hiding place" and the prairie dog changed direction and bolted to the side of the house.

All of this happened so fast. We were dying with laughter and shock. I included a pic of the mulch hiding place. We thought it would be hilarious to have Maggie come out and sniff out the burrow. She was being crazy...she could smell the little guy all over the place.

Quite possibly the funniest thing that has ever happened to Jess and I ever. In fact, I have been laughing out loud during the whole blog post. Which might be a little awkward for the other patrons of the coffee shop as I type. Oh well. :)

Love you all...even you, little prairie dog.