Springtime

Spring is my favorite time of year, generally speaking, but there are some things I could really live without that happen in the spring.

The first of these is the mud. Although we have plenty of grass in our back yard, for some reason the dogs always manage to find the muddiest part, get filthy, and bring it all inside for me to clean up. The door to our backyard is a sliding glass door that connects to the kitchen, and so this time of year the kitchen is always very muddy (mental note: next house, the door to the backyard connects to a mud room first).

The second of these is nesting birds. The birds in our neighborhood think that the perfect place to nest is in our bathroom vent. Generally speaking, they're right-it's quiet, safe from predators and rain, and even has a flap to serve as a door. But Chuck and I really don't like it-the birds go to the bathroom in the vent, get bird poop on the side of the house, and chirp when the vent fan turns on. Then comes the problem of removing the nest after they leave. And no matter what we do-put screen on the vent, put a plastic one-way valve with plastic netting over the vent, etc, the birds alway get into it to make their nest.

The third of these is baby bunnies. Over the years I have seen numerous baby bunnies mauled by animals, and regardless of the extent of the wounds, they almost always inevitably end up dying. Wild bunnies do not do well, even if they get the best medical treatment available.

The rabbits and bunnies in our yard have not realized the backyard is a death trap and that my dogs are faster than they look. This morning I looked out the window and behold..there's a juvenile rabbit in Oscar's mouth. I ran outside to assess the damage, and the poor bunny had a severe bite wound to the abdomen, degloving injury to its side, was in shock, but unfortunately still very much alive. As a vet, I always feel there should be something I should be able to do in these situations, but in this rabbit's case, euthanasia would have been the best option. I set the bunny down gently, took the dogs inside and grabbed a pair of shoes (I was going to take it to a local vet clinic for euthanasia), and when I went back outside to retrieve it, I found that birds had already noted the bunny's situation, and had started attacking it before it was dead. I watched the rabbit take its last two breaths (the scene wasn't pretty), and felt absolutely horrible that my dogs put me in this predicament.

Now, I probably know better than most ordinary people that as much as we want to make our pets human substitutes, deep down they are still just predators and have natural instincts. I'm not mad at the dogs for doing what thousands of years of nature says they should do, just upset that I still let it get to me sometimes.