We have a gopher (groundhog?--don't know which) living under our back deck.
Unlike the one we had a few years ago, this one I've actually seen.

For the most part this has not been a problem. If Macula is indoors when it
shows itself, she goes kinda nuts, wanting out: but when she is outside
she' actually been barking less--she spends a lot of time just sitting and
listening. Once or twice, when she hears it, she tries to dig through the
deck--but so far the cedar has stood up well.

Then this morning: I'm outside with the boys when Macula starts on the
deck--the gopher's there. Took hubby and I about 5 or 10 minutes to get
Macula to chill. THEN...the *stupid* gopher, showing *zero* survival
skills, decides to *leave* its lair and *come out* from under the deck and
on to the lawn where there are 4 adults AND A DOG! Of course Macula started
chasing it, I'm chasing Macula, round and round the garden...

at the most, Macula maybe caught a mouthful of gopher tail fur...I really
have *no* idea what she (or I) would have done if she had actually caught
the thing...

but just how stupid can a gopher be?

Marie

"marie" wrote in message
...

but just how stupid can a gopher be?

Pretty stupid it appears. There's an assinine cat that lives across the
street and 3 doors down. I'm not a cat person but neither do I hate them.
This cat is allowed to just roam all day & night and the stupid thing loves
my yard (and my new car & Scott's truck). This would be the same yard where
one cat-aggressive Boxer lives permanently and another severely cat
aggressive Boxer is currently fostering. This cat taunts my dog(s). He/she
will sit on the curb and just stare at Fancy. Tonight Oreo decided to park
him/herself 20' from my front door where both dogs were looking out and then
started going nuts. Is the cat so smart or confident that its playing my
dog(s) or is it just that stupid? I know there are days I feel pretty cat
aggressive myself with that one.

Pebbles used to corner snakes and scare the bejesus out of me. I like
snakes when someone says "wanna see my Python" and I'm prepared. When I see
them slithering through the grass I panic because we have lots of poisonous
snakes here and I'm not going to take the time to figure out if there's a
pit in the head or not. Anyway, Pebbles was a snake & rodent hunting
machine. Somehow she always avoided being bitten but I was always afraid
that she'd be in a standoff with a cotton mouth, rattlesnake or copperhead
and I'd be too petrified to intervene.

--
Tara

Tee wrote:

Is the cat so smart or confident that its playing my dog(s) or is it just
that stupid?

Probably smart & confident. But count your blessings; you could be LIVING
with such a cat :-/.

Case in point: the aptly-named Trouble has taken a dislike to my new boy
Utah. doG only knows why; he's a veteran of living with numerous foster
dogs and I've never had a problem with him before. The only thing I can
figure is that Utah looks different than any of the others; black Briards
aren't common and the only black foster dog I ever had pre-dated Trouble.

So here's my sweet puppy, who's smart as a whip and tremendously willing
to please but who's also very high drive and has the fairly limited
self-control of any adolescent. And my &#@*! cat follows him around
tormenting him. I don't mean just sitting out of reach acting aloof;
Trouble actively follows Utah around growling and attacking him. Of
course Utah thinks this is simply a WONDERFUL game, and is more than
willing to play back, barking and play-bowing and pawing and chasing...
*sigh*

I've done a fair amount of thinking as to why Trouble is doing this and
I don't think it's a fear-aggression thing - it would be easy enough for
him to avoid Utah altogether and to the contrary I think he's actively
seeking him out. Rather, I think this is my macho little cat's way of
showing the big bad black dog who's boss.

It's a real tribute to this dog's biddability that I had him recalling
away from this "game" within a couple of days of his coming to live
here. And while I don't have him doing formal heeling yet I now can
walk him off-leash past the attacking cat without him doing anything
more than turning his head to look. Still, since he never quite knows
when Trouble is going to jump out from behind a piece of furniture and
attack him, Utah is always hyperalert when he thinks that Trouble might
be around. Needless to say, I'll be very happy when these two have
finally worked things out!

Dianne

On Sun, 5 Jun 2005 22:23:36 -0400, "marie" wrote:

but just how stupid can a gopher be?

Very. We used to have a tunnel under the street between two buildings
at work. A gopher found his way into the tunnel one day and got stuck.
The sequence went something like this:

1. Gopher starts climbing stairs at east end.
2. Person starts down east stairs.
3. Gopher scrambles back to bottom and hauls ass for the west end.
4. Person passes gopher in tunnel about halfway down.
5. Gopher turns around and hauls ass to the east end.
6. Go to step 1 and repeat until exhausted, swapping ends as needed.

We finally got him out by bundling him up in a piece of burlap from
the landscaping people: he was too tired to run by that point. (For
some low value of "run": at his fastest, he was about half my walking
speed.)

Lee

we had a family of rabbits that didn't thing anything of dogs or cats
(or cars*) 9 turned into 6 but now 4 are left.* they like to play in the
road

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