The Poodle (and Dog) Blog

I am living with serial killers

                                                                     Confession #796808

Do you understand the seriousness of these charges?
Yes

Would you acknowledge for the record that what you are about to say is given of your own volition without coercion?
Yes

Do you want an attorney present?
No

I know this is difficult for you to talk about, but when did these killings begin?
It all started last spring when Charlie, the Guinea hen, moved out of our yard to find her own flock. After she was gone, a whole lot of magpies moved in to finish the food in her feeder and on the ground. Magpies are large black and white birds that are totally loud and obnoxious. They were walking around the yard, squawking, all arrogant.

The dogs and I were outside and I looked up just in time to see the dogs body slam one of the magpies to the ground and then…chomp, chomp…and one of the birds lay…dead.

Chomp, chomp?
Little Timmy, my tiny silver Poodle stud muffin, my dog with no sense of humor, negative prey drive. He doesn’t even like to get his paws wet.

He delivered the fatal chomps to the bird?
Yes. Now we call him “The Silver Assassin” and “The Jaws of Death.”

And then what happened?
He brought it to me.

How did you feel about that?
I was horrified. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Then I started laughing. He looked just like an airplane, a tiny fuzzy silver airplane with a frou-frou tail and long black and white wings skimming across the lawn, all proud of himself.

You thought that was funny?
Yes,… but still horrible.

Don’t you think that borders on black humor?
Yes.

What did you do then?
I admonished them soundly and explained that this behavior was not acceptable. They seemed to understand.

Tell me about this dog pack.
They’re just little house dogs, companion animals, Poodles and mixed breeds, sweet dispositions, well behaved, low predator drives, good verbal skills. All four of them together don’t weigh 60 pounds.

But when Charlie was here they kind of melded into a real guard dog pack.

This “Charlie” was another dog?
No, Charlie was a young Guinea hen, but she thought she was a dog until she laid her first egg.

A Guinea hen, isn’t that something like a chicken?
Yes. We called her Psycho Chicken at first.

And she thought she was a dog?
Yes. She was like part of the dog pack. She would squawk from the tree like a sentry and the dogs would prowl the yard to protect us from invaders. We have a six-foot redwood fence around the yard. They learned to be a guard dog pack that way.

These “invaders” were birds?
No, mostly cats or a person walking down the alley. There were no other birds in the yard when Charlie lived here.

I’m getting confused. Can we get back on topic?
Yes.

Were there more instances of this carnage in your backyard?
Yes

How many?
I don’t recall.

More than five?
Maybe.

More than ten?
I don’t recall

When was the next time?
A few days later. I heard some squawks in the yard and when I got out there, a dead magpie was lying on the ground with the dogs standing around it.

And what did you do?
I yelled at them. I made it very clear that if this behavior continued, there would be severe consequences.

What consequences did you have in mind?
I didn’t have a clue.

Did you try to punish them?
Like what? Take away their Game Boys? They’re dogs.

Were the deceased all magpies?
Mostly, but then they switched to blue jays sometime during the summer.

Do you keep a birdbath, feeder, anything that would lure the birds into your yard?
No

Why didn’t you stay out in the yard and stop this from happening?
It didn’t matter. Once I was outside stripping paint off a garage sale bookcase. When I heard a squawk and looked up, they had sent yet another bird to the Great Aviary in the Sky. Another time the deed was done around the corner where I couldn’t see them.

Why don’t you keep them in the house?
I guess I could, but they keep begging to go outside. They enjoy patrolling the yard. They whine and scratch at the door. They turn in circles. They do little wee wee dances. They need to go out for, you know, business purposes. We go for dog walks and runs, but they still want to protect their yard.

Besides they have tags that jingle and I even put bells on them. So I thought the stupid birds would spread the word and finally learn to stay away from them. We would go for a long time without spilling blood…but then…

Chomp, chomp?
Yes

And tell me what happened today?
I was in the house and I heard the familiar squawking that I have come to dread. When I went out the dogs were standing around the patio. They looked at me all innocent, like, “What?”

Then one of them looked over at the little well where the water pipe for the faucet comes up and…

You checked the well?
Yes

And what did you find there?
There were feathers attached to a bird that showed no life signs.

What did you do?
I asked what happened to the bird.

“Cardiac.”
“Suicide.”
“The circle of life.”
“Bird, what bird?”

You didn’t believe them?
No.

So your dogs are not only murdering but now they are hiding the bodies?
Yes

All right. I know this has been difficult. I’m sure you feel better making this confession, but I’m afraid I will have to send in a report. You live in…uh, it says here Malaysia. Is that right?
Uh…Yes.

Thank you for your time, Miss, uh…Miss Doe. I think we have all the information we need. Someone will be contacting you soon.

 

Whither Charlie?

Some of you have asked about Charlie (formerly known as Psycho Chicken), the guinea hen with attitude who spent part of her adolescence in our yard last spring.

Every chance I get I drive through the Greenbelt outside the city limits where there are a lot of guinea fowl strutting around freely, sitting on fences and in trees. I don’t know which one is Charlie, but I can feel her presence there.

It is good that these fascinating creatures have a place to be free to live and raise their little guinea families without developers ever intruding on their world.

A new beginning

Charlie didn’t fly back to her tree last evening for the first time since February. I know I’ll never see her again. But I know she is going to be all right.

She’s been acting strangely and now I realize why.

Since she became ”Guinea non grata” in the neighborhood, you’d think she would stay close to home instead of flying all over and doing whatever she does when she leaves the safety of our fenced yard and her big tree.

But for the past week we’ve seen her only during the late evenings when she came back to spend the night in her tree. Gray skies, rainy days, and high winds have sent humans and furry pets scurrying inside. On those days Charlie rules the world.

Then yesterday as I was raking away some dead grass, my rake hit something hard, which turned out to be not so hard. It was an egg that broke under the rake. A chicken egg. A Guinea hen egg. There is only one possible way an egg could have gotten into the yard.

And then I knew. Charlie has become a woman.

I think she must have some instinct telling her that it was time to stop being a dog and to find her own flock and raise little Charlies. Birds must have some kind of instinct to find other birds of a feather to flock together with. Wayward ducks and swans always find their way to the lakes in town.

We think we have figured out where she came from and where she has gone.

We used to live on the northeast corner of town, but to the north, developments of half million dollar houses have started springing up like toadstools, all looking alike, all crammed together, huge overblown houses with tiny manicured yards and no trees. We don’t know who lives there; they’re mostly commuters who are not part of the town unless they need a service (like trying to get the police to bust a curry barbecue in a garage). The ugly houses have replaced old farms where Guinea hens and roosters lived.

But to the east the planners have committed to maintaining a wide green zone: family farms, row crops, vineyards, open fields, horse pastures, orchards, and trees, lots of big trees. There’s a place for Charlie there. I know she’ll find her way.

I sat outside for a long time last night. I cried for Charlie. I cried for all the free spirits that civilization has displaced even though it has to happen. I cried for everything we’ve lost by advancing our frontiers, even though that has to happen.

Charlie is a smart bird with the instincts to survive. She needs to be a Guinea hen though, not a dog.

I’m sure life won’t be as much fun for her though.

Our lives won’t be as much fun either.

As true spring comes to the Valley

…Charlie isn’t winning any popularity contests in the neighborhood.

My neighbors who are planting gardens are beginning to ask pointed questions about “my chicken” that is getting into their yards. It seems she has a talent for going up and down rows in new vegetable gardens, eating all the seeds. I’ve tried to explain that she's a Guinea hen, not a chicken. It is the insects she is after, not the seeds.

She has more than enough food in our yard, but she seems to need the “thrill of the hunt.” The time between first light and human stirrings pretty much belongs to Charlie, but she seems to like to make the rounds all day. She enjoys flying all over the neighborhood.

Also, she is not backing down from cats anymore. There were some pretty ugly scenes, I heard, involving cats and peck marks. Being in a dog pack seems to have made her lose her guinea roots and identity.

And have I mentioned lately that she is really loud? Think “fire truck going through a busy intersection, only higher pitched” loud.

I’ve explored the idea of a trap, but Charlie is mostly a carnivore. She prefers bugs. Why would she walk into a cage to get a house salad, when her world is full of filet mignon?

I’ve tried to explain that Charlie is a free spirit. I can’t pen her up even if we could catch her. I’ve tried to keep her in my yard by keeping food available for her, but she needs to roam. I can understand my neighbors’ frustration. They think she is destroying gardens and terrorizing pet cats. They have the right to control their yards.

It’s a story as old as civilization. When people move to new frontiers, build homes, plant crops, and tame the wilderness, non-domestic animals have no place there. That goes for snow leopards, condors, eagles, tigers, elephants, wolves, deer, raccoons, possums and gophers.

Wild, free spirit animals on whatever continent, in whatever time, seldom win these battles.

The epiphany

With all the quiet yards in the neighborhood, why has the Guinea hen formerly known as Psycho Chicken chosen our yard?

Yesterday it all became clear.

The clouds have moved on. It was a warm sunshiny day to walk around the yard with the dogs and a glass of ice tea to plan spring trimming and planting.

The good part about this climate is that we can do gardening and yard work in March. The bad part is that we have to do gardening and yard work in March. Without a heavy frost, evil stuff grows all winter and if we don’t start now, by April it takes a machete to get through it.

Suddenly anything resembling serenity came to a squawking halt. From behind the fence came the high decibel squawks that have become so familiar for the past three weeks. Then a blur of feathers came hurtling onto the fence and flew into the tree. And just as suddenly an orange blur plunged over the fence and landed at our feet.

Freeze frame. It’s me and the dogs surrounding a very startled large orange cat, with Charlie cheering from the tree.

Orange cat?!?

The cat recovered first, back flipping over the fence, barely escaping the jaws of Chamois the generic dog who always forgets that she can’t climb. From her perch in the tree Charlie cheered us on.

Epiphany.

That’s why she chose this yard. It has a large tree and here she is safe from cats. Cats hunt with solitude, stealth, and silence. When dogs hunt, you can hear it in the next county. The end game in the cat hunt is death. Dogs just enjoy the hunt.

Our cat, Taki, has stayed in the house as far away as she can from this whole Psycho Chicken episode. It seems to give her a headache. (I might mention that Taki came to us off the streets one day when she was a juvenile and never left. She did clear out a couple of mice that the dogs seem to have befriended.)

In her tiny Guinea brain, Charlie must realize this yard is her sanctuary. As long as her big tree is here and the noisy dogs and crazy broom lady stand sentry, she is safe from any predators who have a chance of actually catching or harming her. She wasn’t looking for a quiet yard; she was looking for a noisy one.

I don’t know much about birds, but they seem to be social animals like dogs.Without a flock, little teenage Charlie seems to have made herself a member of our human-dog pack for her own protection and companionship. Can a bird really be this smart? Charlie is the Mensa of birds, but still.

I have put up a makeshift feeder for her, but Guineas seem to prefer live insects. Since I don’t use pesticides, I have a smorgasbord of assorted bugs in the yard, which I have no plans to use.

We have a weird symbiotic relationship going on here.

The chicken formerly known as Psycho Chicken

…is probably not a chicken
…is probably not psycho
…is probably not a he

Denny, a blogging and email friend from Indiana, wrote:

“It came to me last night as I lay in bed! Your chicken is a guinea! They are very much like chickens but they fly quite well. Guineas are kept pretty much the same as chickens but they are not quite as domesticated and if you try to catch them they fly up into trees or telephone wires.

“I remember them from my old Indiana farm days. Guineas eggs were very hard to find since they would rather lay them anywhere other than a chicken house. Sometimes one or two would just wander off, never to be seen again.”

I’ve never heard of them, but I’m sure Denny is right. It all fits, doesn’t it? Guineas, I found out from the Internet and the man at the feed store, are semi-wild birds that have been known to take up residence in city yards. They don’t like being kept in coops or cages. While they don’t exactly soar with the eagles, they refuse to grovel with the chickens.

Guineas are very loud. People who try to contain a flock of them for eggs don’t get much sleep. Psycho may have escaped captivity, or someone was just tired of hearing her squawking “Born Free.”

One website had a sound file of male and female Guinea squawks. Psycho is a female. She doesn’t look full-grown. I think she is probably a teenager.

And I really shouldn’t call her “Psycho.” She is behaving normally for a guinea (and a teenager).

Nothing too feminine, I’m thinking “Charlie”…kinda young, kinda now…

Observation on storms, humans, furry pets, and birds

A storm has moved into northern California drenching the earth. Humans of all ages and furry pets make only hurried trips outside and only when they have to.

Birds of all kinds, however, seem to carry on their lives just the same.

I’ve never noticed this before.

Living with Psycho Chicken

Detente. Sort of.

Earlier in the week when I realized we were under a Chicken Siege I put the dogs in sit-stay to check out the yard before releasing them in the morning. And there was Psycho all strutting around.

Armed with my human reasoning skills, my commanding voice, and a broom, I convinced him to leave. But he keeps coming back.

Now we have a routine that seems to be working. I bang the door before I let the dogs out. That lets Psycho know to fly over the fence to avoid the Hounds from Hell and crazy broom lady.

The dogs swarm out and sniff chicken invader smells; they run around looking all fierce and having a great time. Fortunately, there is no need for them to bark at just chicken odor. So silence reigns for the most part.

Through the windows I can see him returning at various times during the day. We do the door-banging thing whenever the dogs go out, and Psycho leaves the yard. He always seems to fly back to the fence at sunset, trading squawks and barks a few times with the dogs if they’re out and then he flies to the tree.

What I don’t understand is why with all the quiet yards in the neighborhood would he choose the yard with four dogs?

We have one more dog than the city ordinance permits…uh…suggests…without having a kennel license. Unless there are problems, it isn’t enforced and I live in a different city from my ISP, so I think I’m covered writing about all this. Besides, the combined weight of my little wimp pack is only around 60 pounds. Still. It isn’t wise to have the noisiest yard in the entire city.

The bigger mystery is where he came from. Poultry walking around neighborhoods in town is not totally unknown. Several manmade lakes attract ducks, swans, and seagulls that sometimes will stroll through surrounding neighborhoods.

There are poultry processing plants on the other end of town. Occasionally a chicken that escapes the delivery process can be seen walking down the streets, too stupid to run for its life. But those are chickens bred for the skillet—soft bodied, big breasted, docile, white feathered ones.

Psycho is brown, sleek, definitely a Chicken with Attitude if he is actually a chicken. And if I might brag a little, he’s quite smart for a bird.

Return of Psycho Chicken

Friggin chicken is still here.

When I let the dogs out this morning, he was strutting around the yard as if he were trying to figure out where to have the pool installed.

Then it was “chase on.” All we needed was music from “Benny Hill” or the Keystone Cops to complete the scene. Psycho Chicken squawking, running, flapping, with the barking dogs in hot pursuit, running through the rose garden, the herb garden, the woodpile. Tools, pots and tomato cages flying. The dogs bumping into bushes, tree trunks, each other… Psycho Chicken safely outdistancing them… me yelling.

Do my dogs have selective hearing? Or are they practicing “intelligent disobedience” since I obviously don’t understand the danger from fleeing poultry?

I called Animal Control. “Do you do chickens?”

They wouldn’t send someone out because by the time anyone could get there, it would be gone, but if I trapped it, they would pick it up. She explained that it is difficult to catch chickens, especially one…”Did you say it FLEW into your tree?” Did I detect a snicker?

Finally Psycho Chicken flew over the fence and disappeared. All was serene in the neighborhood once more until we went back out near sunset. This time he flew to the fence, squawked a few times and quickly flew into the tree.

OK. He came suddenly, he won’t stay long. Denial. I love denial.

Sometimes when you ignore a problem it will just go away...

It was a peaceful day in the neighborhood…

until suddenly all hell broke loose.

Spring comes to the Central Valley in February when the almond orchards bloom. It isn’t a lasting spring. It’s more like T.S. Eliot’s “April is the cruelest month…” Some days can be balmy seventies and then a storm moves in, the sun goes away, and it rains from all directions. The last few days have been the sunny variety.

We were in the backyard when suddenly from the alley behind the fence came a sound that seemed to be not of this earth. It was a series of ear piercing “squawk-blucks,” very loud and growing louder.

I should explain that in our city all of the houses built in the past 50 years have six-foot redwood board fences surrounding the backyards. It’s an ordinance or something. A house can’t close escrow until the fence is in place.

Of course the dogs went ballistic, running from crack to knothole, barking and yelping, trying to see what was back there. I climbed up and looked over to see strutting down the alley, flapping its wings was …a chicken, a very pissed off chicken.

He looked like an angry drum major in some poultry comic opera. After about fifteen minutes of strutting back and forth, he suddenly flew to the top of our fence, showing no fear, squawk-blucking at the dogs as they barked back at him.

Finally I had enough. I grabbed a broom to shoo him off the fence and restore the decibel level to the neighborhood. But as I got closer to him, he flapped his wings and flew up into a tree.

Oh, yeah, that worked well. Now Psycho Chicken was high up in the tree squawking at the dogs, and the dogs were furiously trying to climb the tree.

As God is my witness, I didn’t think chickens could fly.