Sunday stroll leads to surprise meeting

Sunday afternoon, I ventured into the woods with my dad so we could put out two cameras to monitor the hog situation in an area that I found a lot of fresh hog sign last weekend.

I figured I would walk around and look for shed antlers as well while we were already out there.

We left the yard and their neighbor's dog, Lucy, decided to go with us.

She is a precious little wire haired terrier that loves to go with us in the woods occasionally.

In the area where we wanted to put up the first camera, the heavy rainfall had collected large amounts of leaves and twigs in the middle of the trail.

As I was turning my four-wheeler around, I felt my left front tire jump as if I had ran over a tree root or larger limb. I stopped and helped my dad put the camera on a tree and he pointed to the front of the tire.

Lying in the leaves and the water puddle was a fresh shed antler with three main beam points and a very small brow tine.

I was so glad we found one and was a bit aggravated since I walked so far last weekend in hopes of finding one with no luck.

Lucy enjoyed sniffing the antler and then she took off to lay in some mud puddles.

We came in not even thinking about looking for sheds until later on and find one that was hiding in the debris.

We headed out with our treasure and were on our way to another spot to hang another camera for hogs.

On the way out, Lucy ran to a small tree just off the four-wheeler trail. My dad kept on driving, but I stopped to see what she was so interested in by that tree.

The elm tree was almost detached from the ground.

The roots were barely clinging to the ground.

The trunk ran horizontally about five feet with one large limb growing from the top pointing towards the sky.

Both ends of the horizontal tree had a hole about the size of a squirrel nest opening.

Lucy grabbed the end of the tree and started ripping chucks off while she was growling.

I told her to stop before she cut her lips and gums.

The rotten little tree was crumbling in her jaws every time that she took a bite.

She kept sticking her nose in, so I figure some kind of critter was inside.

I told her to come on so she would leave the animal inside alone.

We put out the camera at the second spot and realized that we forgot to turn the first camera on, so we headed back to camera number one.

After we turned it on, Lucy ran back to the tree that she had tried to destroy earlier.

I told my dad what she had done before and told him we might want to check and see what she had bayed inside the small tree.

I found a stick about four feet long that was about as big around as a pencil and pushed it into the opening on my end to see if something would run out of the other end.

I pushed and nothing came out.

I watched the stick for a minute and told my dad that the stick was moving so something was inside for sure.

Lucy was still running around sniffing and biting at the tree. We figured that it may be a squirrel.

I found another stick that was about five feet long and as big as my thumb.

I pushed it in the opening and only made it halfway in before a huge brown rat came flying out of the other end right at my dad's feet.

He jumped and hollered, “Dang what a rat!” Lucy chased the rat right back into the log.

We took a few minutes to gather ourselves and attempt to get rid of the large rodent.

We were pretty sure it was a female preparing a nest for some babies.

I ran the stick back in and the rat came out right at my feet.

Lucy barked and it took off back into its den.

I moved the stick again and the rat came out of the other end again and Lucy chased it down the ravine and bayed it in a small tree.

After two shots rang out from the Judge, the rat was done.

Lucy was proud of her quarry and took off with the big female rat.

I managed to get it from her later before she tried to take it home to their neighbor.

I figured that was enough excitement for one day so we went back to the house to take Cooper the shed antler.

After seeing that big brown rat, I should have checked the tree to make sure that four turtles with masks didn't live in there with her! Cooper likes the Ninja Turtles so I had to go there!