"Excuse Me - Do You Know The Way To The Nearest Stream???"

A little after 3 am I was woken up by a huge commotion in the dog yard. Cricket was barking her head off and the cats were pounding at the door to be let in.
Now the cats, specifically Bait, pounding at the door is bothersome. Bait normally rushes TOWARDS crisis!!! One night I was out seeing what the yard was barking about. A moose went storming by me with Cricket in hot pursuit. A second behind Cricket was Bait. I'm not kidding - he was chasing the moose with Cricket. He has also been caught stalking deer and cows. He is FEARLESS and has a very high opinion of his hunting abilities.
Now, when I opened the door to let the cats in, Tic charged in, but Bait did change his mind and headed off to check out the source of the commotion but by the time I found pants, shoes and a headlamp he was back at the door.

All the dogs were so keen on telling me their version of the story that I couldn't sort anything out. I opted to just head in the direction their noses were pointing and where Cricket's barks where coming from.

I found her pretty quickly. She was down in the woods and appeared to have something 'treed'. When the dog yard noise died down a bit I could here her intruder growling. Not good. I tried calling her, but no way was she coming to me.
I mulled over the situation for a bit. I wanted to get Cricket out of there to give whatever the creature was an opportunity to leave, but I didn't want to wander down to her in the dark not really knowing what pissed off creature I was dealing with. Finally I went and woke Mark up for backup.

He got organized and off we went.

When we got close to Cricket we found the problem - A BEAVER!!!! A VERY pissed off beaver. It even had a big chunk of white fur in its front teeth.
I think both he and Cricket were happy to have us end the standoff. As I leashed Cricket and dragged her off, the beaver was retreating with frequent stops to make sure we were still leaving!

All I can figure is he was a youngish beaver that had been sent forth to find a stream to call his own.

And Cricket is tucked in a pen this AM as we give the guy the time to do just that!


Good luck, young man!!!