As a terrier mix Happy was born with an instinct to hunt.  But living in suburbia he could do little more than trail the scent of a squirrel or neighbors cat that had crossed his yard earlier in the day. That was until the day that lizards began to invade our porch. Within a few weeks we went from one or tow lizards that had managed to stumble upon an open door when we working in our backyard, to over a dozen that openly bounced around our porch narrowly missing our heads. This of course was not a pleasant experience to anyone, but most especially my Mother who felt like her cherished space was under invasion and insisted that the unwanted visitors must go.

 

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Lizard, if you are here, I will find you.

 

 

The question was how? Not wanting to harm the little creatures who seemed to think that they had stumbled upon a lizard we had to come up with a plan to expel our unwanted guest.   After some thinking out came the broom and dustpan and a good old fashion game of chase which of course the lizards almost always won.  That was until the day that Happy, watching our little game of chase, decided to lend us a helping hand.  Within moments of joining our “game of chase” his hunting instincts kicked in and Happy the Lizard Hunter was born.

Happy was a natural.  Jumping and swinging around corners with ease.  He meet the foe on their ground.  And it was not long before Happy had his first Lizard cornered for us to carefully scoop into the dust pan and placed safely outside. Eventually the day came when Happy, not satisfied with just cornering the creature, captured his first lizard.  There he stood, a little lizard hanging from his mouth, wearing the most confused expression on his face as he tried to determine what he should do next.

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All clear, no lizards hiding here.

 

We of course were relieved yet horrified.  We were grateful to Happy for catching our uninvited guest, but we never wanted Happy to kill the lizard.  Feeling a trifle  guilty we opened the screen door we let our confused Lizard Hunter out and ordered him to drop his catch. And a few seconds later as Happy proudly pranced off, to our relief we watched the lizard scamper off unharmed.

Since that day Happy has been called to wrangle wayward lizards that had wandered into our porch and even a couple that found their way into our home.  And I am delighted to say that even though Happy was born to hunt and even kill his prey, he seems to have sensed that his duty is only to catch and remove them from the premises.