Florida Bear Attack Victim Survives

I was out by the garden when I noticed Bear was acting tremendously proud of something in his mouth.

If you live with Labradors, you know there is a certain jauntiness that envelopes them when they have found something really neat to carry in their soft mouths. The head is held high, they prance, ... every fiber of their being is telegraphing that they are holding something special.



This is why they make terrible poker players.



Bear was sending all the signals last weekend as I planted a few new veggie plants. I had to check it out, since we have not "baby proofed" all of PFHQ and there's no telling what he had found.

I was expecting to find a half petrified chunk of pig poo left over from Chewie's stay with us.

I called him over.


He danced over, play bowed, and just dared me to take his special find.

Being the Alpha wolf around here, I slipped my hand in his mouth and pulled out ...


... a baby gopher tortoise!

If that picture above looks familiar, I posted a baby gopher a few weeks ago. Interestingly, this one turned up in almost the exact same location near the garden.

NO, NO BEAR, NO, NO!

The baby gopher was unharmed and needed to be returned to my woods. It's a protected species and just another sign that my PFHQ gopher colony is thriving.

Bear had to go inside for a little bit, while the baby gopher and I slipped into the semi-open southwest corner of PFHQ.

At the mouth of an existing gopher burrow, I tucked the little guy into a shady nook.

He seemed pretty happy about it.

PUPDATE:

Bear hasn't received much press lately with Gumbo's illness dominating our lives and checkbooks. He's going to get his own post as I have some fun pictures of him playing in the water.

He is a most excellent pup, full of fun, and his antics keep us in stitches. He likes to slip upstairs and retrieve various bits of Emma's clothing, which he proudly brings downstairs to show off. He's pretty much trained her to keep her delicates above puppy level.

Yesterday, I watched Bear track the swallowtail kite in the sky even though it was just a speck.

(Did I get a postable shot of the most beautiful bird on the planet? Let ya' know tomorrow!)

Today, he flopped after a giant swallowtail butterfly that fluttered past his nose. Everything is so new to him, and he's so amazed by it all.

It's infectious really and I find myself smiling constantly when I watch him.

Same goes for Gumbo who has had an excellent week, except for one sore front leg which may be my fault.

There's a huge turkey oak log in the front yard and I spent some time yesterday getting both pups to jump/climb over it instead of running around it. I hopped up and over the log multiple times, coaxing the dogs to do the same.

They got the hang of it pretty quick. Bear was a little lazy about it, but Gumbo really got into it and he's a lot smaller than Bear so it took more climbing effort than jumping effort.

I guess we overdid it a little with the commando training , he was favoring his right front leg yesterday and I think he might have strained a muscle a little. This morning, he's back in wacky form, running and jumping about.

I have to remember he's a baby.

I only had to write that sentence 500 times before Mrs. FC let me out of the dog crate.