Category Archives: Animals

He ain’t nothing but a hound dog

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Zeke was one sorry dog Monday night.

Not feeling so well, eh?

Not feeling so well, eh?

Late in the afternoon he went out on the deck with me, and saw/heard/smelled something in the woods. So he ran down the stairs, jumped over the gate and disappeared. I gave him a while, because I know from experience that it’s almost impossible to chase him down, and then I went looking for him. No luck. It was way after sunset when I got the car out and began looking up and down Fouche Gap Road. Zeke doesn’t really understand cars, so I was halfway expecting to come home with bad news. Instead I came home with Zeke.

I found him at the side of the road close to the house. I opened the back door and he jumped in. When I got him back home, I noticed that his stomach was absolutely full.

Full belly peeking out from beneath uncomfortable dog

Full belly peeking out from beneath uncomfortable dog

That bulge right in front of his right rear leg is not normal for him, at least not since he lost 15 pounds. What looks like a bulge on his left side is his rib cage, which is prominent because of the way he’s lying.

He was clearly uncomfortable. He moaned and walked around the house. He would lie down next to the front door, which usually means he wants to go outside. I took him out but nothing happened at either end of the dog. Some time before we went to bed, he wanted to go out and sit on our elevated front walk. There he threw up what looked like a couple of pieces of raw stew beef and organ meat, possibly smallish livers.

I cleaned that up and let him back inside. A little while later when we were in the bedroom, he started making the noise that dogs do when they’re getting ready to vomit. I couldn’t get him outside, but at least he threw up on the tile in the dining room instead of the bedroom carpet. It looked pretty similar to the earlier sample, but without livers and with more fat.

Later still (I didn’t get much sleep Monday night), he went out on the front walk again, where he vomited a larger portion of whatever he ate. It still looked like he had found and eaten someone’s stew beef.

Even later, he wanted to go out, so I got up from the bed, put on a jacket and walked him around the house. I didn’t bother to put pants on over my short pajama bottoms. I don’t recommend that. Zeke didn’t do anything other than sniff the air. Looking for more raw meat, I guess.

I am pretty sure he didn’t catch and eat an animal, because there was no sign of fur or bones. All that came out, other than the possible organ meat, looked like fresh, red beef that you might see in the grocery store. I started worrying about someone trying to poison coyotes, but it had been long enough since he ate that, at least based on some Web research, he should have already started showing signs of strychnine poisoning. Whatever it was, he apparently got rid of enough of it that he was able to sleep for most of the night, which is more than I can say for myself.

Today for breakfast he got a few individual pieces of dog food instead of his normal portion. By lunch he seemed more like his old self, and by tonight he seemed almost recovered, although he didn’t eat the two dog biscuits he normally does. He mouthed one unenthusiastically for a while, and then Leah picked up the second and put it away. Right now, he is still lying next to the front door instead of in his bed.

I don’t think he’s quite over it yet. I would like to think he learned a lesson, but that would be fooling myself.

Our own brand of deer hunter

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There are lots of deer around our neighborhood. We see them just about every time we drive in the evening on Technology Parkway, which goes through an industrial park developed on Berry College land. We see their bodies fairly often where cars have hit them, and have even seen one as it was hit. I hit one myself further out Huffaker Road. Mine survived long enough to jump up and run away. Several hang out near our house. Some of them have decided that our shrubs are a buffet, like they did a few years ago during the worst part of our drought.

Deer season for firearms opened here in October and lasts until January 1. Berry College, which owns 27,000 acres, has three short firearm seasons with 1000 permits for the first two and 750 for the third. Berry College extends along Lavender Mountain fairly close to us. It’s more than a stone’s throw away, but certainly within a bullet’s range.

Aside from the damage the deer cause our shrubbery, I am pretty much neutral on deer hunting. I don’t hunt and don’t really understand the appeal, but that’s a personal shortcoming rather than a judgment. Several of my coworkers hunt deer and they seem to be pretty normal people.

I’m sure most deer hunters are responsible citizens, but this area seems to have a significant population of a different kind. I mentioned seeing partially butchered deer carcasses dumped along Fouche Gap Road. I have seen them in prior deer seasons, but this season is the worst. I counted five confirmed and a possible sixth so far this year. There are four (or possibly five) within two miles on Fouche Gap Road and one on the few hundred yards that Wildlife Trail extends from our house to its dead end.

Apparently the practice is to take some meat off the main body of the carcass, leaving the rib cage exposed and the legs and the head untouched. Then the remains are tossed out of the back of a truck. Probably a truck, but who knows? Maybe these people haul dead deer in the back seats of their cars.

All I know for sure is that I don’t want to meet these people in the woods. Or any other place, for that matter.

Persimmon tree

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About this time of year our persimmon trees always remind me of Charlie Brown’s pitiful Christmas tree.

Ripe for the picking

Ripe for the picking

Almost all the leaves are gone, but the ripe fruit hangs on, like ornaments on a bare Christmas tree.

Persimmons are a popular food source, judging by the amount of persimmon seeds in the poop I find around the mountain, but these prime specimens remain uneaten. Something seems to be chewing off the ends of branches of the two persimmon trees at the front corner of our lot. It leaves neat, conical stubs, and the separated branches end up on the ground under the trees. The branches are chewed off from ground level up into the upper reaches of the tree, 10 to 15 feet above the ground. I assume that an animal is chewing the limbs off to get better access to the fruit, but whatever is doing it doesn’t eat the persimmons, either from the tree or from the branches that end up on the ground.

Zeke seems pretty sure that some kind of animal is coming around the trees. I think he’s right. My best guess is raccoons or possums, but so far I haven’t seen any evidence of either except for the chewed limbs.

Snake trap

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A couple of days ago I took the dogs for their walk down Wildlife Trail, where the road has recently been resurfaced. I noticed that Zeke was paying particular attention to something at the side of the road. When I went over to look, I didn’t recognize it at first. I fairly quickly saw that it was a snake, but it looked strange. The head looked almost like a cobra with its hood spread, but the snake looked black with a grayish diamond pattern. Then I realized that it was a black snake that had been caught in an erosion control mat that was backed with a green plastic mesh. The pattern on its back was the mesh. It had tried to crawl through an opening in the mesh. It couldn’t get through, but it had pushed into the opening far enough that the thin mesh caught on the scales and it couldn’t back out. Its head was horribly swollen. I thought it was dead, but it moved a little.

I didn’t have my camera then, or my reading glasses, so I couldn’t see very well. I knelt down beside it and used the scissors on my little Swiss Army Knife to cut some of the mesh threads. But I just couldn’t see well enough to do much.

I had to take the dogs a little further, but I planned to come back after their walk with glasses so I could free the snake. On the way back up the hill, I looked for the snake but couldn’t find it. I assumed it had freed itself, although I couldn’t figure out how it could have done one that

So I went on about my business for the next couple of days. I took the dogs on our usual walks on Fouche Gap Road and didn’t go down Wildlife Trail. But today I had to get Zeke to the vet, so I took a shorter walk down Wildlife Trail. This is what I saw.

Black snake - the green mesh is barely visible

Black snake – the green mesh is barely visible

There it was, right where I left it. I don’t know how I missed it. This time I had my camera and my glasses. I debated taking the photograph (and it turned out blurred anyway), but I went ahead purely for documentary purposes. I thought this time it was surely dead, but then it moved again.

I knelt down and started cutting more of the strands. The swelling had gone down considerably, but it seemed that there were still strands that were caught under the snake’s scales or embedded in its flesh. Even with my glasses I still couldn’t see well enough to make sure I was getting everything, but I cut away as much as I could. Then I had to walk away.

Again, I planned to come back later with my magnifying headset to try to finish the job. When I finally got back to where it had been, it was gone.

Did I get enough of the mesh cut that it was able to crawl away and survive? Did I cut enough away that it was able to crawl away and die? Did some predator get it? I have no idea. It was hard to believe the snake survived with its grossly swollen head. It was even harder to believe that it survived several days after that. I didn’t expect to be able to save it, and I still think it’s unlikely that it has survived. But I didn’t want to just leave it.

A few years ago during the worst part of our drought, we put up some plastic fencing around some plants to keep the deer from eating them. We found a dead snake caught in that fencing. I never thought about how dangerous that kind of thing can be.

The devil you say

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Leah and I were just finishing dinner Wednesday night when I happened to look behind my chair, which is right up against the wall. There was a little insect-like thing on the wall, and it took me a second or two to realize what it was.

Baby scorpion, with nickel

Baby scorpion, with nickel

I caught it with a plastic container. It reminded me of the praying mantises we saw last winter

Based on minimal research, this is probably a devil scorpion native to this part of Georgia. I have been stung at least twice in the past by our native scorpions, and it’s not as bad as a yellowjacket. We see them outside all the time.

I took the little scorpion outside and dropped it into some vegetation where I think it will be much happier.

Unfortunately, the little Nikon point-and-shoot camera we use is not the best at focussing, so you can’t zoom this image too much.