Bulldogs and Baby Birds

So why is that dogs seem to think that dead things make the perfect gift? One evening a few weeks ago he was out in the back patio and suddenly appears with what looks to be some sort of large dried egg shaped brown thing....until I looked closer and saw it had WHISKERS!! It was a dried up cat's head...yet Rocko was so proud of it. It was as if he'd found a gold nugget! When I tossed it over the fence he was devastated and almost didn't get over it...

Then, the other day he is again on the back patio holding something that looked kind of white and fluffy in his mouth. When I finally got him to let it go it was a fat little baby bird. Apparently it had fallen out of the big tree in our backyard and again Rocko seemed to think it was the find of the century....of course Kevin immediately pointed out that the dead bird wasn't his fault as it brought back a reminder of the now infamous 'baby bird incident' a few years ago. For those of you who are unfamiliar, I'll share it here:

It was a fine spring day and we were out on the deck enjoying our little patch of heaven and the new garden. But there was a little bird nest tucked into the corner up under the roof line....Kevin decided to get the garden hose and get rid of the nest before the birds laid their eggs...unfortunately he didn't check the nest first. So he starts his water blasting and before we know it we see a tiny little bird *splat* on the deck.....so sad!! But there was still another baby bird chirping away in the nest! There was no way the mother was coming back to the wet, destroyed nest and its hard to know what the humane thing is to do. Since they weren't going to survived without the mother, he squirted the rest of the nest out of the overhang and the second bird splatted too...but was still kickin...so he picked the little fledgling up with a dustpan and took them both out to the dumpster.

this is where it gets ridiculous....have you ever had one of those conversations with your spouse that makes you think you are both crazy? Me too. And this conversation centered around if it was more humane to put them in the dumpster and let them die eventually, or just give them to the neighborhood cat and have it over quickly. He voted dumpster, I voted cat. At the time, I was working at CoreData and so I of course shared the incident with my coworkers, one of who had been faced with the same dilemma .... a baby bird fell out of a tree in her backyard and she rescued it before her cat could pounce. But she was convinced the baby bird could be saved. In a effort to keep the bird alive, she wrapped it in a little cloth and put it in the middle of her stove which was warm (she had a gas stove). A short time later when she checked on it, the bird was dead!! She'd cooked it!

After that story I didn't feel nearly as bad about the baby birds because I think being allowed to die in a dumpster or by cat are both more humane that being roasted by a do- gooder!