PBW: Chunky Vs. Mama Squirrel

Usually I go looking for Photo Blog Wednesday, but sometimes it finds me first.

Take this past Sunday, for example. As I reclined in my room watching a DVD and resting a neck stiff from hoisting ice chunks, I heard my dad cry out from the dining room, “You gotta see this cat!” Normally in our family, that's code when two of us want to summon a third in to the kitchen to blow out the candles on his or her birthday cake. But it was no one's birthday, and the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

Right outside our dining room window, in the branches of our dogwood tree, perched Chunky, one of our neighbor's cats. He was staring intently at something in our front yard, at one point noticing me and my camera before shifting his gaze back to the subject at hand. I went over to our kitchen window to see what was in his line of site, and there was our friend, the pregnant squirrel who enjoys our bird feeder every day. Chunky eventually made his move, leaping down and prowling across the ice even as Mama Squirrel perked up, sensing danger, and skittered around our bushes.










In the end, she made it up on to our neighbor's fence, while Chunky leapt up on my mom's shed in pursuit. The feline hunter knew his prey was near, but was looking in the wrong direction. Shortly thereafter my mom put some food out for Chunky and summoned him away before he noticed where the squirrel had gone.




Even the most domesticated animals retain sharp natural instincts, although some adopt more human ways of spending a cold Sunday afternoon....