Huh. That's one big squirrel...

At the very core of his being, Samson is a predator. We feed him twice a day, with lots of puppy treats in-between feedings, but he still has a tremendous insticnt to hunt. If any creature wanders through our back yard, Samson expresses his displeasure by howling and barking at the door, as if saying to me, "Let me out! There is fresh protein in the yard and I want to kill it and eat it!" This morning was no different.

A little after 7AM, Samson was howling at our back door. He was clearly agitated as there were some squirrels, or so I thought, in the yard. I opened the back door and he took off for a tree in the back of our yard. I saw movement of a couple of small animals, though one of the animals seemed large. To large to be a squirrel. I followed Samson to the tree, and I was right. That largeer animal was no squirrel. It was a racoon. Samson's hunting instincts kicked in and he circled the tree, barking at this interloper in his yard. While I have seen racoons in the wild before, I had never seen an example of Procyon lotor in our back yard. The racoon jumped from the tree to the top of a fence which rings a tennis court in an adjacent yard. I realized that Samson would be going nowhere so long as that racoon was cornered, and I also knew that the only way I would be able to bring Samson inside was with a leash. I went back inside to grab a camera and his leash, then I returned to where Samson had cornered the racoon.

I managed to capture a few images of the racoon, as well as a nice shot of Samson proudly looking up at his quarry. I was able to calm Samson down and get him on a leash and bring him back inside. Samson was walking triumphantly next to me, quite happy with his work to chase the racoon out of his yard. Yep, at his core Samson is a predator.