Hot-te-Tott!

Our previous dog serenades some robins. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Yet another bunny-rabbit meets its demise in the jaws of canine death.
We figure this is her fourth bunny-rabbit, or maybe her fifth — we’ve lost count — and we’ve only had her a year-and-a-half.
Our immediate back yard is surrounded by five-foot cyclone fence, to keep the dog from disappearing into the wilderness.
We had one dog, our so-called Houdini dog, who could climb that fence, and one day ran away during a thunderstorm, and disappeared.
We never saw her again.
If a bunny-rabbit gets in that fence, and we let the dog out, that bunny-rabbit is dead meat.
The bunny-rabbits occasionally escape, but usually not. If trapped, they get zapped by our blood-thirsty carnivore.
We could try to discourage her, but why bother?
She’s an Irish Setter. It seems endemic to the breed.
Nearly every Irish Setter we’ve had (this is our sixth) was a hunter.
One wasn’t. She was pretty laid back, but caught a robin once, and used to hunt frogs.
Every filthy quagmire was a hunting-ground. She almost got swallowed by one once.
Our first dog, in the ‘70s, dispatched at least 30 squirrels, despite getting hit by a car, which made her lame.
She learned how to sneak up on ‘em.
The dog we had before this one (pictured above) nabbed a chipmunk despite lymphomic cancer, which eventually took his life.
One dog actually ate the rabbit she’d caught. All that was left were a few tufts of rabbit fur, and a dog plump and satisfied.
My wife got up at 2 a.m. this morning (Thursday, November 19, 2009) to let our dog out.
She thereafter went into our bathroom.
Back onto the porch to let the dog back in, and there’s the dog prancing merrily around the back yard with that rabbit in its mouth, pleased as punch; “Hot-te-Tott. Hot-te-Tott. I got it, and you do not!”
I got up myself, and our garage lights were on, a back-door light was on, and all the back yard floods were lit.
Our back yard looked like an apron at Rochester International Airport.
There’s my wife out in her bathrobe trying to get that rabbit.
She succeeded. I knew because our dog was back inside the house.
But I had a frenzied, dashing monster on my hands, yipping and yowling.
“She’s got my rabbit, Boss. She’s lobbing it into the trash.”
That’s two critters in about 12 hours.
She caught a mole earlier.
I took her to Boughton Park this morning.
Hang on for dear life! A squirrel!

• “We” is me and my wife of almost 42 years.
• Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s four, and is our sixth Irish-Setter. (A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. a puppy-mill. By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up.)
• “Boughton (‘BOW-tin’ as in ‘wow’) Park” is where I run and we walk our dog.