This is Luke:
Most of the time Luke is a very good dog. Except for when he’s busy killing birds or taunting possums or whining about his feelings.
A few months ago, when Andrew and I were out-of-town, we boarded the dogs. Andrew picked them up and, upon his return, told me that Luke had killed a bird during his stay. I immediately wanted more details, but Andrew had none to offer, as the boarder had simply said they’d found Luke with a dead bird.
I speculated on how Luke, the dog, had caught a bird. I reasoned that, since the kennel they stay at has an indoor and an outdoor area, maybe the poor bird had flown into the kennel and gotten confused on how to get back out and then Luke, realizing the opportunity to shed some blood, killed the bird. It was a convenience kill, I figured. The bird had wandered into the dog den and the dog had killed it.
Then, a few weeks ago, I looked outside to find Luke chewing on something strange. It was a bird. A dead bird. It was a mess, that bird, feathers folded in all sorts of different directions, head missing and stiff with dead birdness. I threw it away, assuming it had been dead before I’d let the dogs out and that maybe one of the many stray cats that live in my neighborhood had killed the bird and then left it after beheading it. Surely, I reasoned, my dog, a husky and chow mix who cries whenever people he loves leave the house, had not killed a bird.
And then the blue jay thing happened.
I looked outside one day and saw the dogs with another bird. Sadie barked about it, obviously just as confused by the situation as I was. And Luke, the bird killing dog, was playing with the bird, nipping at it and taunting it. The bird was not dead. It was angry. It was a blue jay. It was flapping and squawking and making all manner of angry bird noises.
The thing about blue jays is that they’re assholes. They’re territorial. They’re mean, and lately they’ve been hanging out around my house in hoards. They’ve taken to eating the stray cat food on the front porch and every now and then I’ll be washing dishes in the kitchen sink only to look up and out the window and find a single, mean-faced blue jay staring back at me. When I spot them, they always make brief eye contact, making sure I’ve seen them, and then they fly away, usually bitching and squawking about their stupid blue jay problems. I can only assume they’re planning an invasion or a well-coordinated attack of some sort. I’m not sure if they’re after me, or the dogs, or the cats, or the house itself to use as some sort of blue jay headquarters, from which to plan and launch attacks against cats and small children that inhabit the neighborhood, but I’m sure they’re up to something awful.
So when Luke caught this blue jay – and don’t ask me how he caught it because I do not know and have yet to come up with any reasonable explanation – I was mildly amused because blue jays are assholes and they’d been up to no good for weeks, spying in my windows and eating cat food from my porch, but when I realized the bird was alive – and not barely alive, but angry alive – I realized I had to intervene.
I chased the dogs back in the house, grabbed a kitchen towel, and grabbed the blue jay. I tried to look it over, checking its little bird body for puncture wounds, but the bird was ANGRY and it wouldn’t stop fighting me long enough for me to get a good look at it.
So I took him inside. I grabbed a box from the recycling bin and locked myself and the bird the bathroom (after chasing away one or two VERY interested cats). And I just sat there with the bird. I asked twitter what to do with the blue jay and started googling what blue jays eat and how to take care of a wounded blue jay because this is the crazy shit that I do – I see a poor wounded little critter and I set out to save the damn thing. This is why we have cats, because that awful whore of a mama cat abandoned one of her little orange and white fluff balls at two weeks of age, leaving ME, animal do-gooder extraordinaire, to care for the damn thing.
The blue jay calmed down after a while and I was able to look at his little bird body and could tell that he was not in good shape. I wasn’t sure if he’d survive this ordeal, so I decided to hold him in the towel for a few minutes, projecting calm thoughts at the angry little pest, just to see what would happen.
He was okay for a few minutes and then had some sort of crazy bird seizure. I thought maybe he’d still pull through, but no. He took a big bird breath, exhaled it, and died in my hands.
I looked at him for a minute, unsure of what had just happened, and then I yelled at the dead blue jay.
“DID YOU SERIOUSLY JUST FUCKING DIE?!”
The blue jay, being dead and a bird, didn’t respond and from that I reasoned, he did indeed just fucking die.
At this point, after holding this bird in my hands while he took his last giant bird breath, I couldn’t just throw him away. I had to bury him. So I got a shovel, and I dug a hole and now the bird is buried in the back yard, next to the giant blackberry bush.
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Luke is so handsome, I assume his good looks made the birds fall out of the sky and into his jaw?
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This is my favorite theory ever. I his handsomeness is what makes the birds fall into his mouth. Mystery solved!
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Wow. Now that’s a story
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Terra, you are an incredible storyteller.
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Thanks, lady!
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Buster went after a mouse two weeks ago at our old house. If he had killed it I was not about to pick the damn thing up- although the difference between a bird and a mouse is quite vast. I probably would have picked up a dead bird….but I would have put it in the garbage, not buried it.
Our dogs do weird things with our men-folk away!
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The first murdered bird I totally threw in the trash. The second I couldn’t just because I’d held it while it died and it just seemed wrong to unceremoniously dump the thing, even if it was an asshole.
Dogs are so weird!
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I agree – “Terra, you are an incredible storyteller.”
I also agree that Blue Jays are assholes, and arrogant to boot, so I will venture a guess that it thought it could scare off the Black Furred Hunter of All-Things-His-Pack-Leader-Dislikes (I’m quite sure he has noticed your dislike of Blue Jays).
However, Luke, now being the Alpha Male, in Andrew’s absence, HAD to defend his territory from excessive Jayness-Working-Towards-World-Domination. This Jay miscalculated the cunning and resoucefulness of a Black Dog With One Blue Eye and One Brown Eye (said dogs being considered to have magical abilities in some cultures).
Having held a number of injured birds in my hands through the years as they seemed to improve and then had that weird seizure thing and died, I know how disconcerting that can be. I tend to cry when they do that, but I like your response much beter, and will endevour to learn by your (virtual) example.
Score:
Luke the Black Furred Dog of Magical Talent: 1
Blue Jays Seeking World Domination: 0
😉
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OMG, this is my favorite post from you so far. I know it’s sad, dead bird and all but there is a lot of humor to it as well. Basically, I laughed my ass off and had to read it to my boyfriend.
Thank you so much for telling this story, it just made my night!
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I’m glad you enjoyed it! It is a pretty ridiculous story and even if the bird death is sad, it’s still a little funny too.
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These things only happen to you! Also, I agree with Germana. Clearly, it’s Luke’s superior good looks that attract the birds to him. That’s one handsome pup!
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He is so adorable that you’d never guess he is such a badass killer.
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That’s how he tricks the birds! With his handsome good looks!
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That has got to be the funniest blog I have read in months. I love your reaction to the bird dying, so much better than the tears I would have burst into. Also, Luke has the most handsome dog face ever. Seriously.
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He really is quite the handsome dog. He steals hearts and bird lives for a living.
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i probably shouldn’t laugh at this, right? that’s terrible. poor angry bird. poor you. luke looks too sweet to be a bird killer. lady killer? maybe. bird killer? unfathomable
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I had to stop at this post because your dog looks JUST like our late family dog, Bear. I mean, eyes, ears, etc. So beautiful. (Minus the whole bird killing part, I’m sure). Bear wasn’t a fan of rabbits nor birds and he tried to capture a few, each time putting his hips all out of whack!