Last week, I was entering my house in the evening. Turns out a bird was sitting on the front door’s Christmas wreath. As I opened the door, it woke up and started flying around and around the porch light until it flew off. Glad it didn’t get into the house, I put the wreath indoors and hung a snowflake decoration outside instead.
Yesterday, my mother-in-law’s annual box of Christmas goodies was delivered while I was out. By the time I returned, a corner of the cardboard box had been torn off (possibly by a squirrel or crow?) and a substantial chunk of boiled raisin cake (which is delicious) had been consumed.
Which made me wonder, does anyone else have a story of trouble caused by pets or wildlife around the holidays?
We had a dog, Bambi eat an entire box of candy canes - plastic wrap and all
Another dog, Rocco ate an entire box of chocolates that someone had wrapped and stupidly put under the tree. The dog was a big boxer so it luckily wasn’t enough chocolate to kill him. He did throw up a nice puddle of chocolate “pudding” tho!
Once when we were first married, we had a holiday get together at our house. We had one of those crappy refrigerators that had a small freezer inside of the fridge. Ice cream always became too soft if stored in there. So being a very cold Minnesota night, we put the carton of ice cream outside on the deck for a few hours. When it was time to serve dessert we went to get the ice cream…it had disappeared. Not even a shredded carton. I assume it was a dog or some other large animal unless the neighbor had a hankering for a sundae.
Rocco, who ate the chocolates, would go into one of the upstairs bedrooms and lay on the bed where he could look out at the driveway whenever we left home. One Christmas I bought my daughter a bottle of perfume which was wrapped and under the tree. Come Christmas day it was nowhere to be found. A few months later, while cleaning, I found it between the bed and the wall. Rocco had taken it out from under the tree and brought it upstairs with him.
Along with Rocco we had another boxer named Dino. The dogs were home alone while we were at my sister’s for Christmas Eve. When we got home, numerous decorations had been ripped apart and were strewn all over the floor. Pillow stuffing, garland, beads, chewed up wood…a mess. I knew it was Dino, he was young and had some separation anxiety (which I thought he was over :dubious:) and he had pillow stuffing stuck to his lips! Poor Rocco was sitting on the couch as stiff as a board, his eyes were huge like a cartoon dog. He was scared to death after witnessing the mayhem before him. He jumped off the couch, ran to the door and threw up he was so nervous.
My husband and I took the dogs (Romeo a boxer and Luca a boxer/mastiff) on a walk through the woods behind our house one Christmas morning a few years ago. (Our son and his family would be coming over late morning.) It had just snowed and it was beautiful. The dogs were off leash and were exploring, always within sight. I saw Romeo on his hind legs, jumping around a spruce tree. I could see something on the trunk and thought it was a trail cam. We called the dogs and they came back to us and we continued on our walk. The dogs frolicking in the snow ahead of us. I then noticed that Luca kept sniffing at Romeo’s face. I got up close to investigate and there was Romeo’s snout covered in porcupine quills! Apparently, it didn’t bother him enough to care. Being that it was Christmas Day, I had to take him to the emergency vet $$$$$$. He had to be put under anesthesia in order for the vet to remove the quills $$$$$$$.
When I was a kid, we made gingerbread men and hung them on the tree. Overnight, the dog had eaten all of them from the lower half of the tree. Diarrhea ensued.
For our first Christmas together, my husband and I made colored Christmas cookies to hang on the tree. Ants soon discovered this, and we soon discovered that our tree was seething with ants. Sprayed the whole thing with Raid and dragged it out to the garbage.
A “friend” of mine had a herd of reindeer who incessantly bullied one of the herd members, simply because he was different. Worked out ok in the end, though.
The victim “sleighed” the entire herd, ground the antlers up fine and started a company called Caribou Coffee. He retired wealthy after selling out to a multinational conglomerate and now lives quietly in a modest house east of Fresno. If you are ever in the neighborhood, stop in and check out his trophy room. Quite impressive, yet chilling.
A friend of mine’s dog got out one year on Christmas morning. The father hopped in the car to drive around the neighborhood in search of the pooch. Unfortunately he had downed a couple of Christmas-morning mimosas and got stopped by the police and busted for DUI.
Well, not Christmas but our dog ate an entire one pound chocolate bunny once. Fortunately, it was the cheap kind and contained so little actual chocolate that the mutt wasn’t bothered in the least.
Long, long ago, when I was first married to my first wife, we had an Australian shepherd and a cat. They got along great. On our first Christmas, we did the obligatory tree and presents. My sister made some Christmas stockings and sent them to us filled with little gifts. We didn’t bother to look at what was in them other than what was at the top, so we had no idea that she had packed doggy treats in one, and a bag of catnip in the other.
We came home from work one day to find the tree lying on its side and multiple presents to each other nicely chewed and torn. The dog was leaning against the back door, looking very forlorn, and whining in desperation to get outside. The cat was nowhere to be found. After letting the dog out, we found the bag of catnip, or what was left of it. It had been torn open and the contents eaten. Looking outside, I could see that the dog had a case of the royal screaming shits.
After searching the house, we finally found the cat underneath a living room corner piece, scrunched into the corner and looking like someone who had OD’d on some sort of narcotic, which he had, in essence, done. His eyes were glassy, and he could only emit a low-pitched howl. He stayed under there for two days. A sad couple of characters.
I had a newish puppy one Christmas. She was about 10mos old. I went out for a bit one afternoon and didn’t crate her, she was pretty reliable, potty wise. I came home and found she had eaten, chewed up, and swallowed about 6 glass ornaments. I freaked out and ran her to the vet. He just rubbed his chin and smiled. He asked how long ago and are you sure she ate 6. I was totally upset, probably crying. He took an xray. Gave her an enema and told me to get pepto bismol. Admonished me for leaving low hanging fruit, as it were. He said go home and look for remnants of the ornaments.
I went home and found 6 perfect ornaments in the dog crate, not a crack in any of them. The vet knew, as I should have, she would’ve been, probably, in real distress if she had swallowed that much glass. Stupid.