Gomming & Yowing

Feral Friday: Strangers In The Night

Sometimes I wonder what I’ll post for Feral Friday…but I usually don’t wonder for long!

Last night at 2:30 a.m., Teddy woke up and merfed at me. I recognize most of his barks and growls and gurbles (a mix of growling and barking and trying to speak, all at the same time), and the ‘merf‘ means he’s awake, bored, and would like a rawhide chew, please, to help him get back to sleep. Since anything is better than listening to a terrier merf at you in the middle of the night, I generally comply with his merf-message.

We got as far as the living room before Teddy began skittering around, patting at *something* with his paws. I hoped it was a moth–he likes moths, and I don’t feel too much distress about him catching and eating them.

I turned on the light. Whatever it was that he was after…it wasn’t a moth.

I considered climbing up on a chair, but sometimes you have to be the grown-up–especially when it’s 2:30 in the morning and your bad little terrier has snapped up *something* and run under the bed with it. (That’s Teddy’s  standard M.O. when he’s gotten hold of something he doesn’t want me to take away.)

Teddy emerged on the other side of the bed and dropped what I finally saw was a small tree frog in a pool of drool that the frog’s slimy coating caused Teddy to produce. I also saw a large cricket that the frog must have nabbed just before Teddy interrupted that link in the food chain.

A green tree frog--they can also be olive or brown, like the one Teddy found

Reminding myself that I’m an adult–with opposable thumbs–I took charge:

1. Took Teddy into the bathroom; rinsed his mouth and wiped his beard where he’d drooled all over himself. Contained him in the bathroom.
2. Inspected the frog for damage and freed it from the clump of dog hair tangled around its frog-foot. (Clearly it’s been a little while since I dusted under the bed!) Frog was stunned and drooled-on, but not visibly wounded.
3. Picked up frog gently and set it outside, in the rain, on a leaf. It sat up, collected itself, and got the heck out of dodge (after successfully getting the heck out of dog, moments before!).
4. Cleaned up pool of drool; released  Teddy from the bathroom.
5. Teddy promptly noticed–then ate–the cricket that was still at the scene.
6. Completed mission to retrieve rawhide chew and returned to bed, where Teddy happily chewed himself to sleep.

Having just enjoyed a crunchy cricket snack, Teddy is perfectly at peace with the world

It took me a little longer to fall asleep after all that, but then again, I didn’t have a rawhide treat to help me relax…