The other night as Momma and I watched Fox News, I noticed something outside our living room window.  I sprang to my paws and glared mightily at the creature.  My ears shot up, my fur stood on end and my legs twitched.  I looked at Momma expectantly.  Even she could tell something was up, but she dismissed it saying, “Oh Lina, that’s just your reflection in the glass you see,” and went back to The Factor.

My nightly in”dog”trination . . .

Then I saw the same shadowy figure appear around the corner at another window. Instantly I hopped off the couch for a better look – but what I saw was so scary that I immediately high-tailed it (well, I ran fast) back to Momma emitting a ferocious little growl.

Now I had her attention.  Although annoyed that this incident was interrupting The No Spin Zone, she decided to investigate.  Remembering that bad guys can see in when the lights are on, she snapped them off and turned the deck lights on.  Not surprisingly, she saw nothing – I mean, who/what stands there bathed in bright light waiting to be identified?  Then Momma walked to the back door and turned on the security system.  As she walked past the front door, she saw an animal approach and gaze in.

Yikes, she thought! – is that the big gray cat that she had been seeing in the neighborhood for weeks?  Probably not, she reasoned – too big.  And too feral looking with a pointy nose and beady little eyes.  What was it then?  (Momma grew up on a farm, but somehow managed to learn nothing about animals.)

As the animal continued to stare in through the door, Momma tried to identify it.  (I had wisely stayed in the living room guarding us from a possible attack from the back of the house.)   She thought that it could possibly be a wolf, raccoon, fox, coyote, cougar, lynx or dingo (just kidding – even Momma knew better!), but she really didn’t know what any of them looked like.

As the animal sauntered away Momma took one last look and tried to memorize the image, but it was hopeless.  Five seconds later she couldn’t even remember if it had a tail.  Then she had an inspiration – she would Google it!  Truth be told, that search engine pretty much did all of her thinking these days.

She plugged in “small wild mammals in Minnesota” and clicked on IMAGES (she was pretty proud that she knew of this feature).  At this point Momma didn’t even really care what the animal was anymore – she just wanted to appear knowledgable to her friends – being a farm girl and all.  Admitting that she didn’t know if the thing was a wild animal or a big gray cat (which she hadn’t ruled out) would just be too embarrassing.

Momma had heard that coyotes were appearing all over the Twin Cities – so why wouldn’t they be in our backyard she thought?  She would go with that.  It fit in nicely with her narrative – coyotes were known to go after small animals so now she’d be fearlessly protecting me from a dangerous predator.  Yup, it was a coyote!

Once Momma had finished watching the nightly lineup of Fox programs, she suddenly remembered me and had a frightening thought – she still had to take me out to go potty once more!!  Could she make me hold it all night?  Force me to go on the pee pad in the laundry room?  (Not that she was scared, but she had to protect me after all.)

We did end up going outside for potty but only just outside the door where it was well lit.  When I wasn’t able to go within about 7 seconds, Momma pulled me back inside explaining, “It’s not that long ’til morning, Lina.”

We haven’t seen the animal since, but now Momma is talking about buying a gun, pointing out that she is going to exercise her Second Amendment rights.  I just hope she can tell a Toy Aussie from a big gray cat.

Lina, Guard Dog

WOOFDA!