Thursday, August 20, 2009

Who Moved the Doghouse?




To the best of my knowledge, even though dogs have occasionally sniffed the doghouse on my deck, no doggie paws have ever actually stepped inside it. That definitely includes my own dog, for whom it was purchased five years ago. However, I do know that the doghouse has been used for taking an occasional cat nap by those of the feline persuasion. We've also had many opossum and raccoon visitors, who may have been unable to resist their own curiosity, I suspect. And believe it or not, when I first placed my dog's rejected house on the deck several years ago, it served as the daytime sleeping quarters of a large toad that summer. Nowadays, it's mostly a deck fixture. Last fall, after putting a small rug inside it, I turned the doghouse so that it would face the house, where it remained unmoved until yesterday. I'd even forgotten about the red sweater, until I saw it with the pulled-out rug. Apparently, during the night, a large foraging somebody had decided to turn the doghouse around in order to look inside it. I suspect the culprit was a black bear. Maybe even the same one I'd seen on my property three weeks ago. Over the years, people have told me about seeing black bears in the neighborhood, including my property, but my own bear sightings have averaged less than one per year. Go figure.

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