...Of Dogs and Deer

Nature provides us w/ all types of stories.

DOGS

My dog, Helen Roper, has been a mystery to us since we moved. The night before we relocated to this little den, her mother was savagely attacked by a neighborhood German Shepherd. She wasnt tied up and it was partly our fault, I guess. She just wouldnt be tied and what do you do in that case, I ask you? Anyway, she was frolicking about loose for the last couple of weeks at our former residence and evidently she frolicked in the wrong direction. The night we were packing up our last posessions and whistling for poor old Gladdice Presley, a strange truck pulled into our drive and a forlorn looking neighbor (the owner of the Shepherd and a person we'd never met) approached. He explained that Gladdice was currently at the vet and would have to be 'put down' as there was nothing they could do for her. Of course he offered to pay the expenses and was very contrite.
We have never been the kind of people to adopt our pets like humans. They are dogs to us...pleasant but not necessary to our family unit. We thanked him and moved on. Helen, however was another story...or so we thought.
She was very forlorn for a few days. We had her tied underneath the porch here and she whined and cried so much that we had to move her after a couple of sleepless nights. She shivered always, complained endlessly, and began to look thin and wormy. Her poor ribs showed and even though she ate, it hardly seemed to help. Eventually, the howling moved us to take her a street over to our property where she wouldnt affect our sleep (like I said, not part of the family unit and not necessarily pleasant right now).
I was worried about her and told the man but he said she was just grieving probably and would get over it. Yesterday he comes in and says, 'Helen is getting really sweet and really FAT.' I smiled. ' She won't leave me alone when I'm feeding her, she's eating a ton, and now she's got these little titties.'
So, grieving Helen Roper was actually pregnant Helen. We are very curious if a German Shepherd is capable of impregnanting a beagle and if so, what is the product to be? A German Beagle? A Shegle?

DEER

Deer are such a novelty to me but I can see why the people in these parts so look forward to hunting them. They simply TAKE OVER around here. You can literally drive down any given road and see them scatter like pigeons. They are not quite as smart as you'd think either, seeing as deer season finds the woods chock-full of orange clad brethren and their weapons of choice. When it's daylight, they tend to play chicken in the roads, and at night they just stare. Occasionally, they will dare you to come any closer, moving only when your bumper says they must.
Yesterday, bringing my son home from school, I came very close to making my first kill as a group of them bounded across the road. The smallest of the little gals ran right alongside my car for a good hundred paces before finally realizing she might better skedaddle. As her white tail flipped me the bird, I couldnt help but wonder....'was bambi's mother this impetuous?'
Had she been a little smarter than the average deer, little Bambi's first winter might have ended quite differently. But such is the lay of the land.