Of Flying Dogs and Barking Birds

One of our regular running routes here is known, very poetically, as "the dirt road."  As the name suggests, it's a pretty rough dirt road, varied terrain but not too hilly, mostly deserted and with some nice views of both the river and the city's power plants.  What the name doesn't suggest, however, is the vastly weird collection of species-confused animals that I've encountered on this road. 

Most recently, I was attacked by a flying dog.  There's one small segment of the route that passes from the grounds of a university to the dirt road proper.  There are nice houses on both sides, with high, solid walls and very angry dogs always barking behind them.  When coming through this section yesterday, I heard a noise that was out of the ordinary.  I looked behind me just in time to see a dog, in full mid-air flight, coming over the 7 foot wall.   Thankfully, over a year of living here has taught me how to deal with dogs.  Face them, yell, and threaten them with a rock.  This approach works best, of course, when you actually have a rock.  Super-Dog, after expending considerable effort to get over the 7 foot wall to me in the first place, wasn't going to give up and lose face at this point.  I managed to back up to a rocky section and get a nice, solid deterrent in my hand, and he let me run off.  When I left, he was looking around for other passerby to torment and eying the wall again.  Wonder if he managed to fly back over....

"Woof woof"

Several weeks ago, further down the road, I had another encounter with an odd beast.  I heard barking coming from the grassy bank on my right.  The sound was quite close at hand, and was clearly a dog, but there was no dog there.  Instead, there was a magpie, barking its head off.  I had read that magpies are great mimics, but had never heard one do its trick before. 



The last species-confused animal I've seen out there was probably the best.  Last fall, on another morning run, I saw a movement off in the brush and thought it was a wild dog pack (usually quiet and no trouble, unlike the dogs that belong to somebody.)  Well, I was half right.  A fawn comes up from the field and ran next to me for 50 meters, close enough that I touched its head.  But even stranger, it had apparently been adopted by some wild dogs and was happily running with the pack.

So, that's a small taste of the entertainment here.  Deer-dogs, dog-birds, bird-dogs....  Easier to get out the door every morning when you don't know what you'll encounter!