Where's a Camera When You Need One ?

Most mornings before work, I try to get the boys out for about an hour or so of exercise. My most frequent path is the W&OD park/trail that runs directly behind my house. It offers both a paved bike trail and a gravel horse path which are separated by a thin swath of trees. Much of the park is also lined with houses, schools, and businesses because my area is a very developed suburbia. Fortunately, in my section, there aren't any close-by roads. This gives the boys an opportunity to walk off-leash on days when the trail traffic is very light. Early mornings before work/school are such times. So Wednesday morning, we headed east. After about a mile, it brought us to that nice wooded patch you've seen in recent blog posts. We left the park trail and followed along the stream. It eventually just brought us right back out to the same trail, at which point I headed back west toward home. On walks, I always try to keep up a nice fast pace in order to get my heart rate up, and let the boys dawdle along behind, relishing the smells, peeing endlessly on every twig, eating deer poop, you know,  the usual dog stuff. I do keep an eye out to be sure they don't fall too far behind. So, I turned around to check on them, and saw both boys with their heads buried in the grass on the side of the trail. Nothing new about that. I whistled for them, and both came running. Imagine my surprise when Jimmy's mouth was far from empty! He headed toward me with a huge, headless rabbit in his mouth! It was at least twice the size of Jimmy's head, and quite obviously missing it's own head. Nothing but a bloody stump where it used to be. The rest was fully intact. Jimmy was very proud of this fortuitous find, and really, really, really did not want to give it up! Needless to say, I was rather loathe to touch it when a loud "Drop It!" failed to get the desired result. It required grabbing his collar, stepping on the rabbit's hind legs, pulling and prying them apart, in order to release the prize from Jimmy's grip. Lots of mornings I carry my camera, just in case.....But, of course, not this time, so everyone is spared a somewhat gory picture of Jimmy carrying what he strongly hoped was going to be breakfast!

One final thought: Red foxes are the dominant predator of rabbits in my area. So it appears this bunny met it's fate at the hands (paws? jaws!) of such a critter. This leads me to ponder if my area is populated by Zombie foxes, as only the bunny's head was eaten, and if Hollywood has taught us anything, it's that zombies only eat BRAINS!