My dog is a zombie...

I was siting in my computer room this evening playing with my new copy of The Sims 2 when I heard something strange in the house. My son was supposed to be asleep and my wife was at work so all should be quiet. It sounded like a weird popping or wood creaking. I couldn't figure it out because it came and went. After about 5 minutes I got up to investigate. I found our Black Lab, Jack, in the living room eating something and it was crunchy. I, of course, assumed it was a pecan. We have a 1/2 dozen pecan trees and he eats them all the time. When I walked in he got up and walked away from me and left something on the carpet. Looked just like a pecan to me but a lot bigger than our normal ones. The dog laid down and resumed his crunching. Now I was baffled as I could see he left the pecan shell behind. I went to investigate what he was eating and he got up and left it behind. It was a very small partially eaten jaw bone. Huh? I looked again at the 'pecan shell' and realized it was a squirrel skull. My dog was eating squirrel brains. Yummy. Zombie food on the half shell. I cleaned up the mess and as I was finishing I found an old air-rifle slug on the floor. It appears I shot this squirrel months ago and it got away. (Rare for me. I usually drop them with a well placed shot to the head. He got lucky.) The squirrel lived with a slug in its head for months only to be caught by my killer, brain-eating, zombie dog.

Damn, as I wrote this the dog decided the squirrel brains didn't agree with him and he left it on the carpet. Is there any more distinctive sound than that gagging a dog does just before it vomits? By the time your brain processes what that sound is it's usually too late, the dog has barfed. That was not a fun cleanup, let me tell you. Thankfully my wife was home to help.

: Soldier, Soldier from the album "The House Carpenter's Daughter" by Natalie Merchant