Samson had another kill today...

Well, it happened again. Samson, ever the hunter, found more prey this afternoon. When I returned home from work this afternoon, I let Samson out and I started to throw a nylon frisbee for him, which is one of his favorite pastimes. Samson enjoyed chasing, catching and returning the frisbee to me... for a while. In our neighbor's yard there is ring of pacasandra around one of their trees. Samson sensed something in this ground cover and he he was off. Samson poked around the pacasandra for a few moments and pounced. I moment later, a small, black furry mammal was in the grass in front of Samson. Samson toyed with this animal for a bit and I was able to pull him off long enough for this creature to get back into the pacasandra. Samson and I played with the aforementioned frisbee for a fe more minutes, than his predatory instincts took over. I hoped that Samson would be happy enough with just corning the animal, but I was wrong. In just a moment, Samson reacquired his target, but this time, he would kill it. Once again, I pulled Samson off of his quarry and scooted him back to our house. After he was inside, I went out to collect the remains of the animal, expecting to find a mouse. However, it was not a mouse. Thanks to some taxonomy help from our neighbor, I was able to identify the animal as a shrew. He sort of looked like a mouse, but with a much shorter tail. I picked up the little guy, put him into a plastic bag and put him into our trash can.

Yep, Samson might be domesticated, but he is still a predator at heart.

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.