Fred Basset by Alex Graham for August 21, 2023

Watch your six Fred, incoming baddie!

Seriously! With that excellent doggy hearing you can’t hear them right behind you? Nada? Okay, but you are in for a surprise.

My dog has done in rabbits and field mice but was completely flummoxed by a mole that was crawling across the lawn. I captured the mole and took it to a large empty lot nearby.

“I am a mole and I live in a hole”………

https://www.youtubeDOTcom/watch?v=VAzQ7Pn0Bbc

Remember to change the “DOT” to a “.”

Taking my dog out this morning she spied a baby frog on the patio. She was so curious that she wanted to play with it. Of course I saved the baby frog from being a play thing.

Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you….

We had a cat that would watch a gopher hole for hours while they would come and go in the other ones. We lived on a farm with chickens, geese, goats, horses, pigs, a turkey and several other cats as well as enough dogs to start a shelter. Why the gophers were so fascinating I haven’t a clue. We were only there for 2 years, but it was neat.

It might be time to make a mountain out of this problem.

Perishers?

My childhood basset-beagle mix, Longfellow, was the Reaper incarnate to subterranean varmints. I don’t know how he did it, but his success rate was impressive. Get after ‘em, Fred!

You are going to fail, Fred!

I didn’t know Mr. Dear was a member at Bushwood CC.

Our Missy loves to dig up the Moles and either kill them and leave them for me to find in the yard, or she brings the corpse into the house for me to find. Either way, she hates Moles as much as I.

Bella would be right there with Fred – she’s after anything that moves, but she’s none too bright. If a squirrel runs up the sycamore tree, she will wait beneath until the stars burn out for it to come back down. Meanwhile, Mr. Squirrel has taken the tree-road – he either leapt over to the post oak on the other side of the fence, or to the ash tree, then into the pines that lead to the woodlands behind the house.

Don’t worry …… Fred ….. maybe the Caddyshack Gopher is visiting …. then again it could just be moles ….. :)

A couple of our cats are pretty good at catching them. They go to a hole and plunge a foreleg into it, jiggle it around and viola, they pull one out. Lawn cleaned up in about a week. We later went to native plant, pollinator friendly front garden and no more moles/shrews/burrowing rodents. And the cats are in a catio now instead of roaming freely.

Love it, great art and a full education to boot, “perishers”…

Line from John Rutter’s operetta The Reluctant Dragon (written for the English boys’ school choir he directed): “St. George will spike the perisher, The awful scaly ravisher…”

Fred, you’re not supposed to catch rabbits. You’re supposed to run them right at or by your owner who is supposed to have a firearm and unalive the rabbit with you sufficiently behind so you’re out of the line of fire. So said our basset the first few times he saw a rabbit with us standing there. Never trained him to do it either. After we didn’t do our part, he growled at us in disgust and stopped doing it. I miss that dog.

Pssst, Fred! Behind you!!!