George Rebane

Sarah, the most recent addition to our little family, has now become the Great Black Hunter – well almost.  She arrived from the Animal Shelter with a case of the sniffles which was going around in the facility.  But a couple of trips to the vet took care of that with daily doses of antibiotic.  Then she became 200% kitten and you could hear Jo Ann and me regularly exclaim, ‘I forgot that they did that …’.  You see, our old black cat Leo turned 14 about three weeks ago, and his life has for some time passed at a more dignified and deliberate pace.

Sarah was shown the great outdoors about a week ago and immediately climbed to the highest reaches of the bird-feeder ladened dogwood next to our porch.  In her enthusiasm she overshot the branches where the feeders are and had to discover how to come down backwards and then get off at the proper branch.  The birds were, of course, gone and Leo, looking on, could be heard to mumble something like, ‘You dummy, what’d you expect?.’

Well, if you can’t get the small fast ones, thought Sarah, maybe I can nail a big one, a really big one.  Her opportunity came last night during the puu-puus and wine hour as we had some friends over for a little dinner party.  It seems that a flock of turkeys had landed in the yard opposite the porch and were busy making their usual mess scratching for seeds.  Little Sarah, assuming her best ground hugging stalk, was going to get one of those flying ‘heavies’. 

As we all watched, she made it across the driveway thinking that no one had seen her.  Of course, all of them (about eight birds) had seen the little pipsqueak, and no one cared.  Even the two big toms in their normal guard positions looking down at this little bag of black fur didn’t so much as twitch a muscle as Sarah finally crawled quietly into the middle of the flock.  Have you ever seen a turkey gaze with disdain?

Being literally a couple of feet from several birds, Sarah finally began to understand the scope of her undertaking.  Her plan was executed perfectly, but the intended target turned out to be, well, large.  She was clearly outclassed along every dimension, and worse, completely ignored by these dignified giants.  To save face, I guess, little Sarah then decided to just assume a more comfortable posture and lay there surrounded by turkeys going about their business.  We all know what she was thinking as she now calmly watched all the scratching and feeding going on around her, ‘The ones in the tree are small and fast, and these guys are big and scary, there must be something in the middle that I’ll be able manage after I grow a little; you just wait.’