What She Was Made For

     Many a nature film has showed me lions bringing down an antelope or wolves selecting and devouring the slowest caribou, so suppose I was as well prepared as any child of the suburbs. And yesterday my dog Tiger Lily leapt repeatedly at the porch screen, snapping her considerable jaws, until a trespassing dragonfly lay on its back on the sill, one leg twitching its last. In fact, it had only one leg. Tiger Lily couldn't know that I really like dragonflies, with those huge glinting eyes and iridescent wings. An intruder is an intruder. She has even barked furiously at the little windows next to the front door until we realized she was protecting us from the scary dried starfish whose alien arms stuck out beyond the top sill. 
     Today she caught a squirrel. She walked out with me and my bag of eggshells and banana peels to the compost bin. I was about to set the empty bag aside and get ready to play some fetch when she dropped her shredded, filthy knotted-rope toy and dashed at the big oak in the rear corner of the yard. A squirrel skittered up the trunk, as usual. Then a second one appeared. Lacking wit to climb straight up, it ran around the trunk, only a foot or so above ground, with Tiger Lily right on its tail. 
     We're pretty sure Tiger Lily is a Catahoula leopard dog. They breed them, a mix of many, in Louisiana to rout wild hogs out of the swamps. Her body shape is somewhere between a boxer and a greyhound: big chest, tiny waist, long spine. She's very fast, strong and smart. She likes people better than other dogs, and she has the brindle pattern common to the leopard dogs, in her case a tawny base with distinct, black tiger stripes. And I can easily picture her bounding through the bayou, snapping at the heels of a hog. 
     For this chase, she kept a tight radius, and, as the squirrel slowed a little on maybe the tenth circuit, she grabbed it and flung it onto the grass. Pounce, grab, shake. When it flies loose, nudge it to see whether it's playing dead, which it did a time or two, then tried to run. It didn't get far. 
     I did hope she wouldn't go full feral and try to extract its liver while I fetched the shovel. She stood guard over the corpse while I dug the deepest hole I could manage and restrained her instincts while I slid the shovel underneath, noting the teeth marks and slobber in the grey fur. Covered it, tamped down the soil and picked up her fetch toy. Normally, when she returns it to me, she shakes it until I have to say, "Yeah, I think it's dead, girl." For this session, she brought it to my feet and dropped it.