WARNING! NOT FOR EVERYBODY - BIRD DEATH INVOLVED!

First a little background which you have to know to understand why this is such a proud moment for Annie.

She's slow. Very slow. I have had her since she was 6 weeks old and she's now almost 8 years old, and her entire life she has had one mission, and that was to catch a bird.

One time a neighborhood cat caught one and allowed her to play with it, but definitely not the same thing. It was fun but not her conquest.

This morning I let Annie and Missy outside and came in to get a cup of coffee. Within a minute I heard the most awful screeching you can imagine, and I thought the worst. I thought someone was hurting my dogs. Dropping the cup of coffee and picking up my canister of mace I flew out the back door, only to find two really, really pissed off blue jays swooping down and attacking Annie while she batted their baby around. I yelled at her to drop the bird, to get far, far away, to no avail, and because she had "caught" this jay, she was never giving it up, ever! Not even when those jays landed on her back and pecked at her! She stood guard over that bird and ignored mom and dad jays and finally, of course, killed the baby.

But this was HERS and there was no dropping it, not even to come into the house. She was keeping it. Baby Jay was a trophy, something she could put on a plaque on the wall of her kennel and tell stories about.

Annie stood at my back door for about 20 minutes, thinking that sometime I might lose what little sanity I had left and allow her to bring that bird inside for safekeeping and gnawing on, until I finally took a piece of actual food out there and held it in front of her nose. She hesitated and thought about it for about five seconds but finally dropped the trophy bird and went for the better deal, the snack. Annie will eat every hour if I let her, and she cannot turn down a free, unscheduled meal, even for a mauled up dead blue jay kid that she caught herself!