Tag: beagle

Tickled

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I get sent a lot of jokes via email.
Generally, they’re not very good, but this one tickled me, so I’m going to share it.

A Tall Klipdrift Fishing Tale

I went bass fishing this morning at Groendal Dam, but after a while I ran out of bait. Then I saw a puff adder with a dead lizard in its mouth. Lizards are good bait for bass.

Knowing the snake couldn’t bite me with the lizard in its mouth, I grabbed it behind the head, took the lizard, and put it in my bait bucket.

Now the dilemma was how to release the snake without getting bitten. So, I grabbed my bottle of Klipdrift and poured a little brandy into its mouth. His eyes rolled back, and he went limp. I then released him without incident and carried on fishing, using the lizard as bait.

A little while later, I felt a nudge against my foot. I looked down and there was that same snake with two more lizards in its mouth.
Life is good in Africa.

Numerous disclaimers here: I’m not sure that lizards are good bait for bass (or anything else), I’m not sure that a puff adder is unable to bite you if it already has something in its mouth, and I’m not sure how a puff adder (or the SPCA) will react to Klippies being poured down its throat.

Maybe it’s the fact that it involves brandy. But I think it’s more likely that I just liked the idea of a snake more obedient than our beagle. I’m actually making a list of things that are more obedient than our beagle, and so far it turns out that everything is more obedient than our beagle.

Monitoring the situation

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The common or garden beagle is known as a hunting dog. It’s been that way since the first description of something akin to a beagle (floppy ears, ruined lawns, disobedient, ate socks) in Greece in 500 BCE. The modern South African beagle owner faces a bit of a dilemma, however, as foxes (more recently the traditional prey of hunting beagles) are pretty sparse around the neighbourhoods of Cape Town and the hunting thereof is generally frowned upon anyway.

Although not trained as a hunting dog, Colin will happily go after Egyptian Geese and Hadeda Ibises, cantering playfully along nearby without really alerting them that she’s on the prowl, then suddenly hunkering down into Sport Mode and belting along until they fly away. Sure, Colin is fast, but they have wings. Checkmate.

And so Colin has taken to hunting on a smaller scale: geckos. 10 cm lizards of the infraorder Gekkota. There are plenty of them around at the moment, which will be adroitly plucked them from the walls, brought inside and tossed around the living room in the manner of a cat toying with a mouse, or an orca flinging a seal for fun.
It’s not exactly sport.

This might even it up a bit though:

1006

Yep, obviously that’s in Australia. Nowhere else does wildlife get so stupidly off the scale. This is a Goanna, and they get even larger than this one.

To quote police chief Martin Brody:

We’re gonna need a bigger beagle.

No chance.

Like a beagle with a beagle biscuit

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The first Calvin and Hobbes cartoon was published thirty years ago this week. While any form of humour is notoriously subjective, the adventures of the young boy and his tiger have touched more than most. Here’s one of my favourites:

tigertrap

It’s like when you’ve got to medicate your beagle. Beagles are kind of stupid that way too. Sure, they don’t like having conjunctivitis (who does?), but then they don’t like having the drops put in their eyes either.
However, offer a beagle biscuit and they’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. Then you round on them like Judas “Eddie Jones” Iscariot-esque traitor that you are and put the drops in their eyes.

For the evening dose, pick up the bottle of eye drops, watch as the beagle turns to run away, wave a beagle biscuit, recapture beagle’s undivided love and attention, and repeat the morning’s application.