Bobby came to us in the middle of summer, after a sweet young lady with a big heart found him and a very business-like beagle on an area highway. The beagle was quickly rehomed, since beagles are always popular. On the other hand, there are as many “free to a good home” hounds in Southeastern North Carolina as there are calls about extending your automotive warranty. At least the hounds can be bathed.
Bobby is a typical treeing Walker, a white-and-tan “honey hound” instead of the usual tri-color, but in all other respects, he’s all Walker. He climbs the furniture. He prefers sleeping in the dirt to sleeping in the house. He’s slow to bark, but when he does, he won’t stop. He’s more stubborn than both my mammoth donkeys, combined.
Bobby also suffers from perpetually poor judgement.
We do not allow our dogs to roam; it’s rude to the neighbors, even though they like our dogs. It’s also dangerous to the dogs. The fence around the front yard is close to the length of a football field, and at least as wide, so the dogs need never leave “their” portion of the yard.
Happy Jack, who is an admixture of hounds, has learned his boundaries, although if he gets a shot at freedom, he will blow through the gate like an alumni of Alcatraz. Toni is a nervous wreck when she can’t see her hobbling human, so she is allowed outside without a leash. She waits and watches almost anxiously for me to fall down, so she can either help me up, give me a disdainful look, or lay down beside me for a nap. She’s multitalented that way.
Bobby, however, is still learning. Even though he has filled out to a healthy weight, he is still skinny enough to sidewind his way out of the smallest gap.
All this is background for the story we shall call Bobby’s Great Adventure.
My bride wasn’t feeling well, so I went out to handle the evening livestock feeding on my own. Toni naturally came along. Jack was happily snoring in the bathtub (don’t ask).
The goats had trashed the pasture fence, and were wandering aimlessly around, secretly hoping that they could find a late-blooming azalea and show the most dedicated consumer of psylocibin mushrooms what a real psychedelic trip looks like. Thoughts of transcending the world evaporated when they saw me with a bucket, however. I opened their gate and filled their feeder, leading to dances, baahs and bleats of joy.
Melanie, Eli and Taliana the nervous paint came up for their supper. Our gang of geese, the Cobrachickens, came hissing their way over for their feast of cracked corn. All in all, it was the usual evening cacophony, a pre-dinner concert with no rehearsal, no harmony, no music, and no piano but lots of forte.
Into this bedlam sneaked a tan and white hound of admirable determination and really poor self-preservation skills.
Bobby was fascinated. He had seen and met all the other animals through the fence, but never up close and personal. It was an amazing aromatic, auditory adventure. I yelled at him to stay in the yard, but the allure was too much, and like sailor drawn to a siren’s song, he headed first for the Goats of Doom.
Toni actually stopped and looked up at me. If she could talk, I am sure she would have said “This isn’t going to end well.”
She was right.
At first, things looked fairly mundane. Magnum the goat and Bobby became fast friends. Honey and Annie were standoffish, but the babies, Careless and Reckless, were as fascinated with Bobby as he was with them. Bobby was entranced that these odd-looking creatures were his size, and they almost color-coordinated.
Zechariah couldn’t have cared less, and neither could Sally. It wasn’t ambivalence, but rather because Bucky the lead billy goat was in the rut.
Deer and goats are cousins, so I should not have to explain what it means for a cervid of any kind to be in the rut. If you don’t know, you shouldn’t be living here.
Rutting deer get lovelorn, crazy and stupid, but maintain some of their fear of humans.
Goats, on the other hand, get lovelorn, crazy and psychotic. They fear nothing.
Bucky had already climbed every vehicle in the yard, knocked over a trough, upended a full water tank, and torn out a section of welded-wire fence. Had Sally not been staying at home, I am sure he would have chased a car on the highway, challenged a logging truck, attacked one of the neighbors and possibly started a nuclear war.
I wasn’t terribly worried. As much as I hate doing it, I have long-since learned how to use my walking stick to change Bucky’s mind. We’ll leave it at that, since I know there are people out there who have never had to argue with a screaming, stinking 150-pound demon with two-foot horns who needs to prove his manhood.
Toni saw, smelled and heard Bucky, and decided that I was on my own.
Bobby was bouncing with his new buddy Magnum when a bristling white hair-storm of musk-laden death roared in from the bad side of Hades.
Magnum, being the smallest billy in the herd, is a survivor. He heard Bucky’s battle cry and skittered to the top of my truck. Poor Bobby was knocked sideways.
Bobby’s ears flew as he rolled across the driveway and Bucky corkscrewed himself into a pagan victory dance, winding up for the followup shot.
Bobby might not be very smart, but he instantly recognized that a killer goat twice as big as a hound does not make a good playmate. Bobby dashed for the first safe place he saw – under the horse feeder.
We have, as I mentioned, two mammoth donkeys and one very nervous paint horse. Melanie the Jenny is a sweet, gentle soul most of the time. She kisses people within minutes of meeting them, if she likes them. She has her own cat. She has to inspect every new baby that comes to our farm, whether it’s a rescued squirrel or a newly-hatched chick. When Careless and Reckless were tiny kids, Melanie guarded them while Sally was resting.
But like many sweet Southern ladies of a certain age, she gets cranky sometimes. Because Eli is available, and not always a sweet Southern gentleman, Eli often feels her wrath in the form of large, strong teeth.
Bobby slammed head-on into Melanie’s legs as she was eating. She automatically blamed Eli, so he got a bite on the rump. Offended, Eli snorted at Taliana, who panicked and knocked the feeder sideways – exposing a terrified Bobby to three large monsters with hard feet towering over him, staring down.
With all the skill and speed of a football player upon whose shoulders rests not just the championship but the future careers of every player at his high school, Bobby dodged, ducked, and ran. Unfortunately, before he found the endzone, he found the Cobrachickens.
Our geese are natured somewhere between a band of Viking berserkers and a satanic street gang. The geese who survived last year’s slaughter by stray dogs have no tolerance for canines of any description, much less a deer hound.
They take delight in attacking dogs, cats, goats, other geese, bears, coyotes, foxes and wolverines. I’m just kidding about the wolverines. We don’t have wolverines. Not anymore.
Have you ever been bitten by a goose? They grab and twist, while flogging you with their wings. It’s altogether unpleasant. The Cobrachickens flogged, pecked and bit poor Bobby as he once again began running. This time, however, I was standing beside the gate, which he couldn’t enter fast enough. He didn’t stop until he was in the house and under my desk.
I am sure Bobby will break out again; after all he’s a hound, and hounds do that. Some things they just refuse to learn. One lesson that has stuck, however, is never to mess with Cobrachickens, hungry donkeys or devil-goats.
