Saturday, February 18, 2006
Oh, I forgot
Yellowjackets and pumpkin guts... two other things I've seen the dog eat lately. He hates yellowjackets (sometime I will tell you the story of the time Jason unearthed a big nest with the bobcat he was driving). Anyway, since the bobcat/yellowjacket incident, Lucky is permanently pissed off at yellowjackets. When he sees them flying around you can actually see him scowl and then he will follow them, snapping away until he catches them. He won't run away, even if they are stinging him in the ass. He will just eat them. I know they sting him, too, because I've seen him shaking his head as he eats them, but nevertheless, he does swallow them. He ate about 4 pounds of pumpkin guts the last time we carved halloween pumpkins. We had 5 or 6 pumpkins and we were throwing the guts in the woods... he'd go chase the guts and eat them. Surely, anything a human tosses aside must taste good, right? I kept expecting him to crap pumpkins over the next few weeks...
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Pumpkin guts, makes you kind of wonder doesn't it? Dogs have some of the strangest habits.
Scientists say that we have been domesticating the dog for perhaps up to 100,000 years now, (at least 30,000 years according to other sources) you would think they would have picked up on human ideas of what is polite. I have seen one of our own dogs go bee-hunting with a vengeance, again after having been stung, and would expertly kill and eat them by the dozens, crushing them in his front teeth so they could not sting him. (Lobo the arctic wolf, who has a number of strange habits.) I doubt they tasted any too good, but he seemed to take a special pleasure in devouring them.
There is even a theory that dogs actually helped to "steer" human beings into civilization. It is odd perhaps that of all the wild creatures, wolves are known to adopt baby humans and raise them. Not saying that wolves make great pets (have one here that we frequently suspect of being more than a little bit canis lobo - named Lobo by coincidence) just it may be the answer to one of history's riddles; namely just exactly why homo sapiens managed to replace neanderthals? Neanderthals were more than twice as strong, with larger brains, and a sense of smell thought to be as good as a dogs; they had a hyoid bone just like ours so were quite capable of speech, had mastered fire, made excellent tools and weapons and had survived several ice ages, some 250,000 years all told. So how does puny homo sapiens overmaster them? Two differences I can see, one is that we modern humans have actual canine teeth - those pointy teeth just in from the front, which coincidentally male horses have, while neanderthals do not. Strange, since neanderthals were supposedly largely carnivorous, but there it is. The other thing? Sapiens kept dogs! Dogs which would help in tracking and killing game, help in protecting the home against enemies, and even directly in combat (though we don't use them as such today, in ancient times dogs were very much a part of war as excellent auxilleries.) all of which might not be enough to tilt the balance, but then again it might. Considering that the experts say the Neanderthals would not have gone extinct if their birth rate had been only two per cent higher, such a minor advantage as a dog might be the answer.
Now if I could just convince these dogs we have that a fresh horse turd is NOT a delicacy to chew with relish just before coming over to lick us in the face...
Oroblanco
almost forgot my tag line
"We must find a way, or we will make one." --Hannibal Barca
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