Nothing like this would ever happen to me in a million years:
My dogs have dropped a number of things at my feet over the years, including a large, very deceased-looking possum that was not at all dead, as it turned out. But never a pound of pot. (The possum played dead so convincingly that I sincerely believed it, but as soon as my husband took the dog inside and went to fetch a bag with which to dispose of the body, the “carcass” leapt up and ran off hissing, much to my surprise!)
What is the worst thing a pet has ever offered as a gift to you? Open thread!
schrodinger's cat
Headless mice, grasshopper with severed limbs and half eaten moths.
feebog
We live in what used to be a orange grove. So tree rats; both new and fresh kills and desiccated.
peach flavored shampoo
HOLY CRAP! Possums really play possum? I thought this was just an embellished fairy tale/anecdotal story. And yes, a hissing possum is not friendly, as they have some sharp-ass teeth.
And is it “Possum” or “Opossum”? Debate!
benw
A very alive Garter snake.
JPL
My dog prefers mice. He also brings in dead dried up worms and drops them on the floor.
boatboy_srq
My well-loved (here, meaning thoroughly chewed) Vuitton billfold the SO had given me for Christmas. She was so proud of herself: she knew Daddy needed his wallet when he went to work…
I can vouch that Vuitton products are nearly indestructible.
Punchy
My brother’s guinea pig offered us 3 more guinea pigs. On Christmas Day.
raven
When the Bohdi was about 8 months he managed to get my bride’s bra on !
Zinsky
I wish I had a dog that brought me bags of pot – preferably some sweet Hindu Kush.
dr. bloor
My cats can sniff out weed like bloodhounds, but they always bogart the shit no end.
raven
My friend’s family owned Morris the cat. All I will tell you is that that cat caught some major buzzes!
Tom Levenson
Mouse livers/intestines. Other mouse bits available on request.
schrodinger's cat
@raven: Bohdi looks so saintly in that photo.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
My kitty used to steal my brother’s stash and bring it to me when we shared an apartment after college.
chopper
bloody squirrel with its head chewed almost off.
TaMara (BHF)
My cat brought a LIVE (small) bull snake into our bed and proceeded to play with it until I woke up and sat up to take her toy away from her. THAT is when I realized it was a snake.
(ETA: This may have been when my ex started plotting our divorce, LOL)
That bedding got washed in bleach.
My greyhound brought me a Leg-o-Deer on a hike one time. No idea if it was leftover from carnivore kill or a poacher. But ewww.
schrodinger's cat
@Tom Levenson: How is the awesome Tikka? Keeping you in line?
JPL
Years ago, my golden went to the vet for his physical. While in the room, awaiting the vet, he decided it was time to go and went to the door. When I didn’t jump and agree, he walked over to me and took my purse with him to the door.
JPL
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Well trained, huh.
MrSnrub
A friend of my dad had her cat drop a live bat on her chest in the middle of the night.
bemused
We had a dog that would steal things our nearest neighbors left outside such as sneakers and bring them to our door step. The funniest theft was a small potted tree the neighbors had just purchased to plant. We live in the country and neighbors are not right next door as in a town so our dog had to haul it quite a distance. The pot had to be at least 25# and our dog was about 55#. He did get tired of pulling it to our house about 3/4 of the way and just left it on the trail. That was many years ago but we all still laugh remembering that dog’s antics.
Josie
The face of a very large rat – just the face. My Macavity was a mighty hunter. I still miss her after almost 10 years.
Betty Cracker
@peach flavored shampoo: They really do play possum / opossum! The one I’m talking about even had its tongue hanging out between its bared teeth and its legs stretched out stiffly at weird angles. Mofo looked dead as a door nail! As soon as the door shut behind the mister and the dog, it looked around, jumped up and ran off!
@raven: OMG, that’s hilarious!
Matt McIrvin
@peach flavored shampoo: Technically a possum is a different animal: opossums are various species of New World marsupials, whereas possums are various species of Australian marsupials, so named because they vaguely resemble opossums though they are only distantly related.
Amaranthine RBG
The head, spine, and some mushy fillet chunks from a decomposing salmon that had recently died after spawning.
Dog apparently retrieved and dropped it at my feet so I could see her roll in it.
bemused
@Amaranthine RBG:
OMG, rotting fish is the worst.
Shell
A dead rat. And the bloody hall rug where the critter was dispatched.
A semi-digested pile of cricket parts in the middle of my bed spread.
And yes, possums do play possum. Above-referenced dog who managed to dispatch most of the small animals you could find in a suburban back yard, in her lifetime, was foiled by a possum.
mquirk
Our cat once brought a *live bee* into the house, hidden inside his mouth. He came in, meowed, and the angriest of bees came flying out.
Paul in KY
My kitties are not that good.
bemused
@bemused:
This dog also herded a porcupine from the surrounding woods to our backyard and had it cornered on top of a wood pile. It took him several hours to do this. Determined dog.
Tom Levenson
@schrodinger’s cat: Totally. Time for a photo update, I think. The cat who delivered rodent parts (nearly nightly for a while) was, however, my childhood pet Suki, who sooooo loved me that he couldn’t stop sharing his nightly hunt bag.
Matt McIrvin
When we had three cats that spent some time outdoors, they’d occasionally leave dead mice and such on the patio, though they’d more frequently eat them and then hork up the bloody entrails.
Matt McIrvin
The cute version was my wife’s old indoor cat who liked to hunt balled-up socks. She had a special pair of socks that belonged just to her for killing purposes; she’d murder the socks and then bring them to us, making this special mouth-full-of-sock meow, and we’d have to take delivery of the socks, pet her and praise her sock-hunting prowess.
Kay Eye
In our household the cats can do no wrong.
I found our little gray boy at the back door chomping on a young rabbit, causing much yelling.
Me: Your cat has killed a rabbit and has sucked its heart out.
Husband: No he didn’t. Cats can’t suck.
jeffreyw
We get the occasional lizard.
CaseyL
A few years ago my kitties gave me a black (dead) rat for Thanksgiving and a white (dead) rat for Christmas. Very holiday spirit-ish of them!
Another time Oscar (aka Mighty Hunter) brought home a bird that I at first thought was a crumpled leaf, because he’d already eaten the head. But it wasn’t for me; it was an aperitif for him. He sat down and started his kibble lunch, pausing every few mouthfuls to wash the kibble down with a bite of bird. Nothing left at the end but a few feathers – and no, if he vomited up the indigestible parts, he did so outside. Bless his heart.
Mike in NC
We had a cat that brought live birds into the house a few times as offerings.
japa21
About the only thing our late Maggie used to bring to us was skunk spray all over her chest.
Poopyman
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, Max (the girl cat) does the same for us, only with shoelaces, her favorite toy.
Of course, she also leaves dead rodents and the occasional songbird on the front porch right where your foot will land if you’re not paying attention.
Patricia Kayden
I’m dying of laughter at your story, Betty, because my dogs have brought me a dead bird and a dead squirrel but never a live possum. I would collapse and start foaming at the mouth if they ever did. I swear I would!!
P.S. Those possums are really tricky creatures, aren’t they? Look how they’ve colonized Trump’s head.
elmo
When we lived in the mountains, we had a cat who would kill chipmunks and then bring their heads into the house, deposit them in the bathtub, and play air hockey. Long red streaks going all along the length and up the sides of the tub attested to his joy in this.
Amir Khalid
@peach flavored shampoo:
Per Wikipedia, the possum is a tree-dwelling marsupial native to Australia and most closely related to other Australian marsupials like kangaroos. The opossum is a much more distantly related marsupial native to the Americas.
rikyrah
These people are pure EVIL
A phucking ACCOUNTANT telling a NURSE what to do?
I’ve had so many Elder Relatives. I am shaking with rage here.
…………………………….
FBI: Texas Hospice Owner Directed Nurses to Overdose Patients
“You need to make this patient go bye-bye,” executive is quoted as saying
March 30, 2016
The owner of a North Texas medical company regularly directed nurses to give hospice patients overdoes of drugs such as morphine to speed up their deaths and maximize profits, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit for a search warrant obtained by NBC 5.
Executive Brad Harris, 34, founded Novus Health Care Services, Inc., in July 2012, according to state records. The Novus office is located on Dallas Parkway in Frisco.
Harris, an accountant, instructed a nurse to administer overdoses to three patients and directed another employee to increase a patient’s medication to four-times the maximum allowed, the FBI said. He allegedly sent text messages like, “You need to make this patient go bye-bye.”
In the first case, the employee refused to follow Harris’ alleged instructions, according to the FBI affidavit. The document does not say whether the other three patients were actually harmed.
Amir Khalid
I think I’ve already mentioned that time Bianca brought me a disemboweled (and very dead) brown squirrel. Personally delivered to the computer desk in my upstairs bedroom.
Just One More Canuck
At the age of 16, the now departed but still missed Scully caught a chipmunk, just to prove she could still do it. When I came near her she dropped it and the thing ran away. Our current feline boss (Elsa) couldn’t catch a cold, although she likes to try
glaukopis
My Kunta Kitty brought home a fish head after a dumpster diving adventure. Also a live lizard on another occasion.
Shantanu Saha
One day a long, long time ago, a possum walked into our house through the back porch and sliding door. It and the cat saw one another and bolted- the cat behind the sofa that I was sitting in, the possum into the kitchen. My mother saw it, screamed, and the possum ran back out the door, never to be seen again.
rikyrah
uh huh
uh huh
hmmmmmmm
………..
Tech C.E.O.s Held a Secret Meeting with Top Republicans to Stop Trump
Billionaires, tech C.E.O.s, and G.O.P. leaders all converged to discuss the Republican front-runner.
BY MAYA KOSOFF
MARCH 8, 2016 9:42 AM
The most powerful people in the technology sector, along with other billionaires and top Republicans, flew to a small island off the coast of Georgia last weekend to attend a secretive forum, where they discussed, among other things, how to keep current Republican front-runner Donald Trump from winning the party’s presidential nomination, the Huffington Post reports.
Among the cabal of tech C.E.O.s who met at the remote Sea Island Resort for the American Enterprise Institute’s annual World Forum were Apple C.E.O. Tim Cook, Tesla Motors and SpaceX C.E.O. Elon Musk, Napster C.E.O. Sean Parker, and Google co-founder Larry Page. Top Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senator Tom Cotton, and Karl Rove also attended the forum, as did billionaire G.O.P. donor Philip Anschutz and New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger.
…………………..
Trump wasn’t the only topic that had attendees squirming in their seats. Senator Cotton and Apple C.E.O. Tim Cook also had an uncomfortable debate over encryption. Apple is currently in a legal battle with the F.B.I. over an iPhone that belonged to one of the terrorists in last year’s San Bernardino attacks. “Cotton was pretty harsh on Cook,” one source told the Huffington Post, adding “everyone was a little uncomfortable about how hostile Cotton was.”
G.O.P. leaders and experts both at Sea Island and at a recent Republican Governors Association retreat in Park City have strategized about how to defeat Trump, either by beating him at the polls, or by denying him enough delegates to prevent a brokered convention, in which Republican delegates would be freed up to vote for another candidate. A presentation shared with The Washington Post by operatives from an anti-Trump super-PAC shows where some G.O.P. leaders see the front-runner’s vulnerabilities, though others think anti-Trump efforts are futile. Trump’s success hinges on one thing: a set of primaries in states including Ohio, Florida, and Illinois on March 15.
LAO
Technically, not pet brought dead animal story but…still crazy. Growing up my family had a stone cold killer black lab named Shadow and no animal was safe. Our next door neighbor raised rabbits and had a couple of wooden rabbit hutches in their back yard. Somehow, Shadow escaped our yard, which he rarely did and raided both of the hutches, killing a number of rabbits and releasing the remaining rabbits into the wild. Our neighbor, a stern German woman, rang our front doorbell with her 15 lb dead rabbit “Volkswagon”in her arms demanding to know why Shadow killed him.
Our poor housekeeper just looked at her and closed the door in her face. The strange thing is, 30 years later, the wild rabbits in my parents neighborhood still show the influence of breeding with the domestic rabbits.
Jacel
Our family’s siamese cat once brought in a dead hummingbird. I knew she was a skillful hunter, but how did she manage to do that?
In my current town, a cat gained national fame a few years ago (even appeared on Letterman’s stage) for stealing clothing and other items from neighbors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dusty_the_Klepto_Kitty
raven
My dog Henry once went after a squirrel on the dead run, caught it, flipped it in the air and snapped it’s neck on the downward fall.
Face
What’s the mandatory mins for a Labrador caught retrieving 1 kg of Mary Jane?
Betty Cracker
@LAO: Poor Volkswagen!
jl
Thanks. The colorful adventures of Florida Dog don’t receive enough attention.
Seems like Florida Man gets all the press.
Mary
Not exactly on point but close enough. This is my favorite thing on the Internet. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/dogsinelk.html
Felonius Monk
Betty, I trust that that possum was not the orange one that resides atop the head of a well know presidential candidate.
We had a male cat years ago who would drag stuff from downstairs to upstairs and vise-versa. It started with him dragging a half-loaf of bread(in wrapper) from the kitchen counter across the entire first floor and then up the stairway to deliver it to the master bedroom in the middle of the bed while its occupants were asleep. This behavior eventually evolved into dragging clothing around — jeans, sweat shirts, etc. Upstairs to downstairs — downstairs to upstairs. And it could take him an hour or more — he really worked hard.
He was a wonderful cat and we still miss him.
Gin & Tonic
One day when I was at work and my wife was at home she called me to tell me the cat had brought a rabbit into the house. I said “well, I’m at work.”
That was, despite the (live, but petrified) rabbit, the best cat we’ve ever had. She was always trying to help feed the family. Every other cat has been just a moocher.
Big Ol Hound
Had a dog who brought home a neighbor’s shirt after he ate it. We saw a piece of chambray poking out of his butt while the poor guy was really straining. We slowly and care fully pulled a whole shirt out of him, buttons and all. When the whole thing had emerged, he trotted happily away.
WereBear
I have cats. Mayhem is routine.
Fortunately, since I keep my cats in, actual body parts are limited. In my old house, I had a chain link room for the cats to enjoy, and they would occasionally entice something close.
My Bubby proudly brought me an entire crow, which he somehow managed to get through the chain link, the cat door, and into the house.
My shocked reaction was not what he expected.
SiubhanDuinne
@jeffreyw:
That picture looks like a Google Doodle gone bad.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Since this is an open thread, President Obama has commuted the sentences of 61 federal prisoners serving drug sentences, all cocaine/heroin/crack related. Compare and contrast to Nixon’s plan to criminalize the drugs that his enemies preferred. Propane Jane has a nice little tweet storm today pointing out that in 30 years, we’ll finally all recognize that GWB’s little Afghanistan adventure and the rise in Big Pharma’s opiod push were all part of a plan to hook poor whites, complete with some pretty damning graphs. Of course the difference being that now it’s a public health crisis instead of a law enforcement matter, because white.
geg6
All of you with dogs are doing it wrong. At least, based on my dogs. They bring me nothing. Ever. For any reason. I, however, am expected to fetch and carry to them all they desire. And if whatever it is I’m fetching and carrying happens to be food or treats, well, that’s as it should be.
ETA: Hell, if my dogs found a pound of pot, they’d eat that shit. Lovey once found a roach (not the bug kind) at my sister’s, a rather large one at that, and promptly bolted it down before I could grab it from her. She was rather subdued that evening when we got home.
bemused
@Felonius Monk:
He was using his hunting instinct. We have an indoor cat that does something similar, hauls up fabric from my weaving room, meowing loudly/
Jager
German Shepherd with a mouse tail sticking out of his mouth, told him to “Drop it.” He did, the wet and sticky mouse shook it off and ran away. The same GSD would collect our guest’s underwear and hide it in the shrubs along with pens, a calculator, the occasional book and other things that caught his interest. Damn dog.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@geg6: my old lab was not a sharer. He would of just eaten anything he found. I swear that dog had a gizzard like a vulture.
Just flipped on MSNBC to see if there was any news and hoping Andrea Mitchell is on vacation, and instead I see live coverage of Trump talking about Lewandoski in Wisconsin. I’m not just a liberal elitist, am I? this shit has to be boring even to his red hatted howler monkeys
Miss Bianca
The most terrifying thing my dog ever brought back was an alligator skull from the yard of the house across the street. I mean, I knew it was a *dead thing*, no way it could hurt me, but swear to Dog I could.not.make myself touch the thing. So that meant trailing along to the house across the street and confessing what had happened so that the guy would come get it out from where it was grinning horribly at me from under the pine tree in front of my porch.
The worst part was that the guy was a mean drunk (sober he was nice as pie), and he was drunk that night. So not only did I have to deal with the gator skull, I had to deal with his diatribes about my thieving dog as he came and retrieved the thing.
LAO
@Betty Cracker: The worst part is I knew Volkswagon, When I was in elementary school there was a magician who did kids’ parties — we all wanted this magician because the birthday boy/girl got to keep the rabbit he pulled out of the hat. Volkswagon was the rabbit my neighbor’s kid got at his 8th birthday party. (I was at the party). It was very sad.
PS my parents were like, you can have the magician but you can’t keep the bunny because we have a killer dog. So after I stopped crying (which took days) I opted for a different type of party.
Gin & Tonic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Of course it’s boring to them – just some guy manhandling a mouthy bitch. Happens all the time in their world. I’m sure she was asking for it, you know?
Betty Cracker
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Does she think 9/11 was an inside job too?
raven
I know ya’ll loved Bowie, here’s Stipe covering him last night.
LAO
@Face:
In dog years — about 4 months.
Miss Bianca
@geg6:
Did she beg you for nachos afterwards?
Randy P
Back half of a rabbit on my wife’s birthday. We always said he’d saved us the good half, the part with all the meat.
But we buried it anyway.
Our current cat is not a great hunter but does occasionally bring in a live baby bird or bunny. Mostly what she likes to carry around is the metal remote-control mouse we bought her one Christmas. The remote control part was vastly amusing to the humans, but it never worked well and we lost interest. But for some reason she loves to carry that lump of metal from room to room, much more than any other toy.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
Amazing that Tom Cotton — the junior Senator from a meh state* who has been in the US Senate for all of a year — gets listed as a “top Republican” and invited to schmooze and strategize with the Paul Ryans, Karl Roves, and Mitch McConnells of this world. I guess holding the pen on an arguably treasonous letter to Iranian leaders during the nuclear negotiations is enough qualification for the GOP to open their arms and shout “One of us! One of us!”
*(Nothing wrong with Arkansas — it’s a pretty place with nice people. But it ranks around 33-34 in both population and GSP, so it’s not as if Cotton is representing a powerhouse state that might mitigate some of his personal awfulness. That “deep Republican bench” is looking shallower by the day.)
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah:
Gee, I don’t suppose it’s occurred to these Titans of industry that the surest way of stopping Trump is to vote Democratic?
grumpy realist
Most of our cats did the usual plethora of half-eaten corpses laid out on the porch (one time it was a rabbit stuffed into the back seat of my father’s car.)
Although there was the time one of them came up and dropped a LIVE mouse in my lap.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: I wonder if Mitch McConnell didn’t bite off more than Chuck Grassley can chew?
I imagine Grassley’s pretty well entrenched, but I wonder how long before somebody says, “Hey, look, Braley was right!”
Auntie beak
my cat, the late and much-lamented big guy, left me an entire chipmunk, which he had eaten, whole, and promptly regurgitated. think about it. a chewed and semi-digested whole chipmunk.
scuffletuffle
Live bat, live rabbit (very nearly the same size as the cat), live snake and very dead mole, the last one into the bed in the middle of the night.
Mustang Bobby
I don’t remember Sam ever bringing in a dead — or live — trophy, but when we lived in Michigan and would visit my folks who lived in a wooded area, he was a master at finding the most odoriferous deer scat to roll in. And then he objected strenuously to being bathed.
I get it why dogs like to mark trees and such, but what is it about the canine brain that makes them want to smell like the underside of a buzzard’s wing?
Ann Marie
My cat Mac liked to drag my heavy, Merrell slides down the hall and drop them down the stairs. I’d be watching television downstairs and hear this “bump . . . bump . . . thud”. He would do more than one shoe per night, but never a matching pair.
J.D. Rhoades
Our Fargo has brought home four opossums so far. When he comes home with one in his mouth, I drag him away into the house, then wait an hour. Only one has been there and still dead when I came back out. I took that one into the field across the road and left him for the buzzards, which made short work of him in a day or two.
We came home one day and found Our Clifford (RIP) in the yard gnawing on a large, fully intact spine. We prefer to think it was from a deer. We let him have it as long as it stayed together. Kept the Jehovah’s witnesses away.
Country livin’….
CONGRATULATIONS!
@LAO: I’d be pissed too. We had a killer black lab (mostly lab and some Afghan – princess dog!) as well with one crucial difference; if she smelled human on the animal, it was as safe as if it had been in the house. So she’d kill wild bunnies all the time, pretty much every rodent she could find, but the one time our neighbor’s pet bunny got into our yard, she just stood over him and barked until we came out and restored the critter to it’s rightful owner.
She was insanely smart and loved me and I’ll miss her until the day I die.
Ryan
I had a declawed outdoor cat as a kid, and once or twice a week, sitting outside next to the entrance to the house from the deck would lie a bird, a bunny, a mouse, and the like. Offerings of love I imagine.
Randy P
@Mustang Bobby: Especially when you consider how much stronger their sense of smell is than ours. I could never understand that.
PaulWartenberg2016
Oh man, I’m bummed this wasn’t a FLORIDA story.
J.D. Rhoades
@Mustang Bobby: Camouflage.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Betty Cracker:
No idea. Would it shock you if 9/11 turned out to be LIHOP? It wouldn’t surprise me at all. It doesn’t make you Alex Jones to not believe the official story. Americans have gotten pretty good at stuffing a lot of uncomfortable shit down the old memory hole. Just ask Gary Webb and Fred Hampton.
J.D. Rhoades
Wife just came back from lunch (she’s my office manager) and told me there’s blood all over the front porch, so we assume Sophie the Cat has been busy.
LAO
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I did not not blame her for being upset at all. Not sure why she had to bring the dead rabbit to our front door — but yeah, she was understandably upset.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@PaulWartenberg2016: I made the same assumption at first.
Nice
jl
Oops. I misread the state in the story. I guess I was primed for it being a Florida something.
My apologies to Mississippi Dog.
Mississippi Dog is clearly the most useful and enterprising Dog.
Booger
@Auntie beak: Had one of the kittens come stumbling into the house with the haunches and tail of a chipmunk sticking out of its face. Apparently it couldn’t chew it any further, but couldn’t disengage it either. When you reached down to ‘help’ it, it made this ungodly growling sound to let you know to get yer own damn chipmunk.
Don’t recall how the situation resolved itself but I had zero chipmunk.
Mnemosyne
@bemused:
That may be another instinct. Keaton (who was neutered as a kitten) likes to hump my sweaters. The vet says it’s very common, but they’re not quite sure if it’s instinct raising its head despite the lack of equipment, or if it’s a dominance thing.
Humanities Grad
Seconding what others have said, yes, opossums definitely do play possum. Which, by the way, is precisely the wrong survival strategy when confronted with a dog, because the dog’s natural response is then to grab said possum and turn it into her personal shake/chew toy. Typical result is a broken neck for the possum (my wife’s chow chow has exterminated well over a dozen possums during her lifetime).
Incidentally, while they look fierce, it turns out that they’re really not all that dangerous, because the “playing possum” is a physiological reaction that they can’t control. When facing a threat, they don’t fight, they just go comatose.
The same chow chow also managed to get a dead baby bunny into our last house, leaving it on the living room carpet, where I discovered it. Thankfully, she hadn’t had the time to start eating it yet, and it was easily disposed of.
Protip: If your dog kills an opossum, DO NOT BURY SAID OPOSSUM IN YOUR YARD. Possums smell bad when alive, worse when dead, but a three-weeks-dead-and-then-exhumed possum will unfurl an assault upon your nasal passages that will have you wishing for death.
MomSense
Hmmm, my dog steals my socks, mittens, scarves, hats, glasses, remote controls, and other of my personal items and holds them ransom for cheddar cheese.
I had a cat who used to bring me live snakes, chipmunks, and frogs and place them at my feet. I don’t think my reactions were what she was expecting.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, all of you outdoor cat owners are making me grateful once again that ours are indoor-only. Since we live in an apartment two blocks from the freeway in a neighborhood with abundant coyotes, we’re all much happier with them staying indoors. Even if Annie does sometimes decide that she needs to howl at 3 am to warn the stray cat in the back alley that the alley belongs to HER even though she never gets to set foot on it.
gorillagogo
My ex has a cat that brought a live rabbit into the house once
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense: She wanted you to kill them, she was teaching you to hunt.
Stacy
My two ginger cats decimated the chipmunk population at our last house, often killing them right outside our sliding glass door with our 3 year old watching. Also the occasional baby rabbit. Serial killers.
J.D. Rhoades
@gorillagogo: I’ve heard this theory, that cats think of us as just very large and very inept cats that need to be taught the basics.
Eric U.
we got an electronic fence for the dogs a few years back, but the oldest dog used to have a long rope. The bunnies would hang out just a little further out than the length of the rope. I didn’t realize brinksmanship was a bunny trait. They would occasionally misjudge, at least from the carcasses. It’s possible that was feral cats or something else.
I think if the dogs catch something now, one of them eats it, they are pretty jealous of each other
I wish the dogs would scare off the voles, the burrow is really annoying. Instead, the dogs just dig up the yard
Immanentize
@LAO: 10 Attaboys and two treats?
rikyrah
Nearly a third of Republicans don’t want Muslims in the military
BRIAN PATRICK BYRNE
Mar 30th 2016 11:13AM
Nearly one-third of Republican primary voters don’t think Muslims should serve in the U.S. military, according to a national poll conducted by Public Policy Polling.
In the poll, conducted between March 24 and 26, PPP asked 505 Republican primary voters: “Do you think that Muslims should be allowed to serve in the US Military, or not?” Thirty-two percent of respondents said they shouldn’t be allowed to serve, while 49 percent said Muslims should be allowed to serve in the military. The remaining 19 percent said they weren’t sure.
Of those who thought Muslims should not be allowed to serve, most of them were women. Thirty-five percent of female Republican primary voters gave that answer compared to 30 percent of men. Younger respondents were more likely than their elders to have the same preference. Thirty-six percent of respondents between 18 and 45 years old told pollsters they don’t think Muslims should be allowed to serve, versus 28 percent of respondents older than 65.
trollhattan
Both my Dals have been ratters but not for the purpose of gifting their humans; rather, the joy of the chase and kill and in the case of our current critter, the consumption thereof (if I’m not around to shake the damn thing out of her mouth).
She once came into the house unusually wound up and on further inspection, sticky around the head and neck. Suspicious, I went out back and eventually found rat bits–skull, hindquarters, random gore. She’d evidently eaten her fill and the rubbed herself in the entrails, hence the sticky mess. All is not good when that happens and I hauled her butt to the vet for stomach pumping in case the rat had been poisoned–why else would a rat be out in daylight?
Retrievers are more creative. A friend’s brought his mom a purse. She had to dig through it to figure out who’s–it was a neighbor’s. That took some ‘splainin’, especially since they lived in the woods.
Other friends found a new loaf of Wonder Bread their retriever had buried in the garden; stolen, as it turned out, from workers across the street at a house being remodeled.
Mnemosyne
@J.D. Rhoades:
I remember someone years ago saying that cats think of us as giant, insane, hairless cats that need to be taken care of lest we hurt ourselves. And, of course, they think we’re really dumb.
I think WereBear says that cats think of every animal that lives with them (including humans) as another kind of cat. She had a rabbit living with her cats years ago and the cats just seemed to treat it like a cat with an embarrassing abundance of ears.
bemused
@Mnemosyne:
Fascinating. I always lived with cats and that’s a new one to me. We had a neutered male cat that we could not keep inside. He would come home beat up. He also would pick on our sweet female kitty. IOW, he was a dominating tom in every way, just without his jewels.
One of our female cats uses me for prolonged kneading sessions.
tybee
@Big Ol Hound:
had a doberman eat a pair of pantyhose. pulling that out was really nasty.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
I know and I loved her dearly but it was a little upsetting to have a writhing snake dropped on you when you weren’t expecting it. She was a small feral who was the most fearless hunter I’ve ever seen. I did eventually trap and release her gifts. The chipmunks were tough to catch!
Betty Cracker
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Yeah, it would surprise me to learn that the US government knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance but let them happen so as to carefully orchestrate a scheme to launch a war, gain control of poppy producing regions and foster an opioid epidemic among the working class in the US for fun and profit. I don’t think I’m particularly naive about the stupidity and viciousness of government officials, but that theory does sound like something Alex Jones would peddle, IMO. YMMV.
MomSense
@tybee:
HA! I had a lab do that. Thank goodness we didn’t have camera phones then because me chasing the dog around the yard holding two sticks trying to pull out pantyhose while he tried to evade me would have been embarrassing.
Roger Moore
@Jacel:
My cat has caught several hummingbirds, which is not something you’d expect an indoor cat living on the third floor to do. I’m pretty sure the ones he’s caught have been chased into the house by other hummingbirds- I have feeders on my balcony and sometimes leave the door open- and get lost before flying back out. Once they’re in the house and desperate to get back out, they’re much easier prey. I have managed to save a few before he was able to catch them, which is how I know this happens.
And a dead hummingbird is not the worst thing Jake has brought me. The worst was a live moth he spat onto me while I was sleeping. The residents of Tokyo did not appreciate the epic battle between Jakezilla and Mothra.
Mnemosyne
@bemused:
I think Keaton would like to dominate, but he’s really a lover, not a fighter, so the humping is how he gets out his frustration that the two girls just. won’t. LISTEN!
He’s also very aware that he’s much larger than them and could hurt them if he’s not careful so, again, he has some frustration to discharge.
LAO
@Immanentize: Any pup that brought me a large bag of marijuana would be sentence to a life time of treats and belly rubs.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
I would be surprised by your scenario, but I would not be surprised to find out that the CIA was up to their old tricks and decided that they may as well get their cut of the heroin trade since we were in Afghanistan anyway. The pharma companies pushing “non-addictive” opiates and creating a new addiction problem was one of those happy accidents, for certain specific values of “happy.”
schrodinger's cat
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: That is cray cray and the type of junk the totally off-the-rails crazies like Thinking Housewife, peddle.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: Sounds like murder, to me.
Paul in KY
@Big Ol Hound: Did you send the shirt back to the neighbor?
Steven Gregson
My cat brought in a live pigeon and proceeded to chase it around the house; feathers flying everywhere.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@schrodinger’s cat:
I don’t think the point of Afghanistan was to take over the poppies for Big Pharma to addict the people at home, but Afghanistan is a narco state – it’s their main source of cash. I think like everything else about those fucked up wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were profits to be made, resources to steal, people to exploit and intimidate, and the opportunities were taken to do so, with no scrutiny. I think you’d have to be naive to think that it’s pure coincidence that one thing lead to another. It’s certainly not crazy.
J R in WV
We live in the woods, and each fall our dogs quit eating kibble. They can find “bambi-bits” in the woods which they much prefer. I don’t really mind them eating out – just like all the other scavengers cleaning up the woods. Hunters usually “field-dress” their deer in the woods, so as not to carry the whole thing out to the road. Most of the bits are these. But some deer get away, even though mortally wounded.
And so the dogs sometimes do bring home – things. Previously deer things.
Worst was waking up one morning to find an eyeless but staring deer head just outside the bedroom on the back deck. O M G !! Spines are bad too…
Many years ago we had a cat who learned that he could bring a mouse into the bathroom and play with it in the tub, for the longest time. (Horrible for the mouse, delightful fun for the cat!) We started giving him the once over eyeball when he wanted in at the front door after one day he marched purposefully to the bathroom with a wild-caught mouse. He learned to tuck his head down when returning loaded as it were. But he couldn’t help the muffled meow from having his mouth full.
Then he brought a sparrow in and let it go in the bathtub… he was looking up at the flying bird, trying to figure out why his trick didn’t work that time. I closed the door, it was a small room, and caught the bird in just a few minutes. He was pretty tired when I caught him.
After we moved out of town into a two story farm house, I had put new windows in, and there was an open gap under the upstairs windows 8 or 10 inched high. Driving home one afternoon, we saw him actually run up the side of the clapboard house and into the upstairs through the gap under the window.
Timmy was a very smart cat. We miss him. He’s been gone 30 years. He never brought home a staring skull, though, so he was a good cat.
maurinsky
My now deceased cat Casimir left a half a bat for me in the kitchen one morning.
cmorenc
Where can I get one of those dogs? That’s a damn great dog to have.
D58826
Our basset smelled something interesting inside a brown paper bag while out for his evening walk. He immediately headed for home with the bag in his mouth. looked like a kid with his lunch bag. Turned out there were two peanut/jelly sandwiches in the bag so must have been some kid’s lunch bag. He got one and I disposed of the other one.
schrodinger's cat
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I was referring to the theory of 9-11 being an inside job. I don’t think CIA is either benign or wonderful, however, this Afghanistan-pharma-poppy theory is too convoluted.
ETA: Correlation != causation
Betty Cracker
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Nothing at all crazy about that, which undoubtedly happened. But that isn’t 9/11 trutherism or even “let it happen on purpose,” which is a different kettle of fish altogether.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Smedley gave us a gift only last night. We awoke to the sound of him hurling next to the bed at 3:00 in the morning. We’ve had him for less than a year so far, so he hasn’t given us anything else, yet. But he should be with us for the next 14 or 15 years, so he has lots of time to find something even better.
gogol's wife
@raven:
So cute. But he’s doing it rong.
gogol's wife
@Steven Gregson:
I came home, found blood and feathers on the kitchen floor, couldn’t find the body. Finally I went in the 2nd-floor bedroom to see a mourning dove sitting on my bed, apparently not badly harmed. I had to call my friend’s capable husband to help me out. He threw a towel over it and got it to the window, and it flew away.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
I’ll repeat my 9/11 “conspiracy theory” again: I think the Saudis told Bush that Bin Laden was just some asshole living in a cave and nothing to worry about, so the Bushies ignored all of the warning signs. W’s frozen expression that morning was, Goddamnit, that asshole Bandar fucked me over!
Culture of Truth
Live bird. Which then flew around the house. It’s not easy to get a bird to use a door.
Shana
Once, on a walk in the woods near our house our late dog brought us the hind leg of a very deceased deer. There are tons of deer in the woods.
Also, when we first got him and before we’d installed the invisible fence he would wander through the woods to neighbors houses. Once he brought back a very ratty stuffed animal that had been left outside in someone’s yard. He carried it around for ages. We called it Lightning’s Baby.
JaneE
I once had a cat who was death on gophers. Record was six in one week. I had a neighbors 5 houses away report that my cat had left a gopher on their porch. Why she left that one there instead of bringing it to me I don’t know. Another neighbor called to report that my cat was acting strangely in their yard, just sitting motionless and staring into space. He thought maybe I should come and take her to the vet to get checked out. By the time I walked over, he was holding the cat and looking sheepish. She had just been waiting for a gopher to pop up – apparently she could hear it underground or something. As soon as he called me, the gopher poked its head out, and the cat did her thing. We were gopher-free for years after that cat died.
bemused senior
Live mole brought in through the open 2nd story bathroom window used as a cat portal. Leo the giant black cat had no idea what to do with it, so I was awakened by a strange yowl, and found the mole unharmed in front of him between his paws.
My dear recently departed dog Toro loved to eat my underwear and socks, which, if I was insufficiently vigilent, I would occasionally have to pull from his butt on our walks.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: Yeah. Never attribute to cunning and malice what can be explained by stupidity and carelessness.
Matt McIrvin
One of my cats killed a little snake once, a teeny garter snake or some such thing, though he made no effort to bring it back to me. It was in a torrential rainstorm; the snake had somehow gotten into the basement, and it was too quick for me to catch it, so I decided I’d just let it get out however it came in. A few hours later I went down there and found it dead in the middle of the floor with a single precise bite to the neck. Dude hadn’t even bothered to try eating it.
gvg
Does anybody have a link to the funny story I recall linked from here some years ago about someone out west whose 2 dogs found a deceased elk or deer in the yard and they played in the rotted corpse including crawling through the rib cage? I think there was some mention of green flesh…..and the smell. It was very funny and this thread reminded me of it.
Roger Moore
@JaneE:
That neighbor must not be a cat person, because that sounds like absolutely normal feline behavior. My cat does it all the time, though usually if I look carefully I’ll discover that he’s actually staring at an insect that’s so tiny I never would have noticed it.
Captain C
@Mnemosyne: I have a friend who used to have a male cat, twice neutered (as they thought the first time didn’t take for what will be obvious reasons), who liked to hump stuffed animals. This got amusing when said cat acquired a shine for a Tickle-me Elmo doll.
I had another couple of friends who had a clever dog that was part Australian Sheepdog and part Queensland Heeler, named Caspar. Caspar was trained to fetch the newspaper from the end of the driveway, and was rewarded with his wet food. After awhile, their neighbor started complaining that his own paper was always missing; my friends figured out that Caspar would bring back their paper when the wife got up to go to work, and then steal the neighbor’s paper when the husband got up an hour or two later in order to double-dip on the wet food.
Juju
A deer spine with one rear leg still attached, a dead vole and a tailless nearly dead lizard.
Miss Bianca
@Roger Moore:
I used to wonder why I’d catch my cats staring intently into corners, apparently at nothing. Then I found out that mice can sing! We can’t hear them, but I wonder if cats can! And if when they are staring they are listening to mice burbling away in the walls!
Roger Moore
@Miss Bianca:
Yes, they can. Their hearing goes to even higher frequencies than dogs. Since they don’t make any sounds nearly that high pitched themselves, scientists figure it’s so they can hear ultrasonic noises from rodents- very handy if you plan on eating them.
BruceFromOhio
Lots and lots of dead birds. A live bunny once.
If it would bring home bags of weed, I’d have ten cats.
schrodinger's cat
@Miss Bianca: They have such huge ears compared to their tiny heads. I wonder what else they can hear.
Lymie
The head and front quarters of a looong dead deer. A black cat front leg with little white toes.
The hard part is to speak cheerfully to get it away from him while gagging. “Oh, thank you, Simon, what a good boy!”
Mathguy
One of my whippets brought up to the deck a woodchuck it had killed in our yard…also, rabbits, squirrels, grackles, and assorted other critters, and unidentifiable carcasses.
LAllen
Betty Cracker (best name on the internets) this is funny. Being from Alabama I come from a possum infused culture, though I have never encountered one live. That being said, I recently saw a marmot that has established residency under my 84 yo Dad’s shed. Someone else saw it too and said that it stand about knee high on “it’s hind legs like a little man”. This is the same Dad that took me and my three kids, along with sister’s son out one cold Christmas night “shining for coons”. Looking for racoons in trees using 6 volt plastic lanterns. We were using the lanterns, not the critters.
Ruckus
Best gift my golden used to bring was live skunks on the back porch. She wouldn’t harm them or chew on them, just retrieve them and sit on the porch holding them in her mouth. Skunks don’t like this and would show their displeasure most unpleasantly. Only way to freshen up the dog and the porch was tomato juice. A couple of gallons of tomato juice. Of course you then had to wash both with soap and water. Always a fun afternoon.
Pat Mc
My cat, Skeeter, once brought home a squirrel tail…
thalarctosMaritimus
This is a once-removed event, but during an anatomy class I was teaching, a student brought me a gift of a tibia that her dog had found in the woods behind her house and brought back to her.
Fortunately, the police I took it to were able to determine that it was non-human.
Mel
Dainty grey tuxedo kitty, Zelda Fitzgerald, used to line up three or four shrew heads, Godfather-style, on my pillow. Could never figure out if they were a loving gift or a thinly veiled warning of things to come if she didn’t get her nightly Temptations treats…