This is the item for amazing animal stories.  Stories about the strange
and wunnerful things your animals have done.  Or animals that you know
about.

When I was little, we had this german shepherd.  One December we moved to
a place in a new town where we couldnt have pets for one reason or
another, and we had to give her away to our neighbors.  Which we did and
we moved to another town that was maybe an hour away on the highway.  

Our neighbors in our old neighborhood called up a few days late rto say
the dog was missing.  A week or so after that, in the middle of a
snowstorm, the dog showed up at theback door of our new house.  She had
wandered down the highway for days and finally found us!

After that we kept the dog, we didnt care what the lease said.

19 responses total.

That's really cool. :)

Now for my addition...  A few years ago my neighbors went out
of town for like two weeks.  They took their cat to some friends
of theirs. These friends lived about 1/2 hour away from my
neighborhood.  Anyway, after the cat had been there for three 
days she ran away.  Then about a month later we had a flood, 
concentrated in the area she had left from.  Two monthes
later she showed up at home, thin, with fleas, ticks, mites,
all sorts of things.  But she found her way home. :)

well my story isnt' nearly as good as you all's but here it is:

<Once I had this golden retriever named Duke and My freind lefttwo of his
goldens to stay with us while we were on vacation.  One morning we woke up
and the dogs were nowhere to be found.  We got a call later and it turned out
that all three dogs had runabout ten miles away from our house.  they had to
croos a major interstate to get there so  I am still amazed to this day that
the three made it that far.

Neat stories

Buttercup is such a good kitty.  When I go to bed she ususally jumps
up in bed and snuggles up with me within 3 minutes of the time I get 
in bed (sometimes in just seconds.)  She didn't one particular night.  
After a few minutes I called her: "Buttercup!"  She gave one of those 
vocal-type purring noises, sounding kind of concerned.  "Pdrdr."  
"Buttercup!"  "Mrewo."  "Buttercup?"  "Mmpurdrdr."  So I went to see 
what was wrong.  She was sitting on the very top step on the staircase 
that leads to the basement.  "What's wrong?" I asked.  "Prdrdr," she 
told me.  I turned on the light to see what going on.  She stepped onto 
the main floor and walked about 4 feet over to where I had put my bag 
down after work.  She pawed under the bag a bit, so I lifted the bag and 
found a big roach!  So I left her there to keep an eye on it while I 
located a flyswatter and paper towel. "OK, sweetie, move."   She stepped 
back and let me wack the thing. I picked it up with the  paper towel 
and disposed of it.  Of course I gave her a kitty treat after that.
Her job done, she sat and looked out the window for a while before
jumping into bed.

Aww... smart kitty.

Sasha has this habit of waking me in the morning if I don't get up
fast enough.  Mainly, the alarm has been going off, but I just hit
snooze.  She knows I need to be up so I can feed her and the other
two, so she wiggles her way under the covers and licks my ankles.
At the time this does not please me, but she's saved me from being
late to work a couple times, which is good. :)

Buttercup does that, too.  She doesn't like to get under the covers,
though.  She just jumps into bed and pushes her face into mine.  She has
a snooze button, though.  Usually if I just pet her once or twice and then
stop, she'll leave for about 10 minutes.  When I sleep in on the weekends
she typically gives up on me around 9:30 or 10:00 :-)

Like you said, this does have an advantage.  Even if the power goes out
I don't have to worry about being late for work.

Well, I'm not sure that will work for me (the power being out) I think the
alarm wakes them and then they insist I get up.  I don't think they like the
noise the alarms (yes, alarms) make. <ponders> They do tend to wake me
before 8 on the weekends though.  I generally feed them and then go back
to sleep, however, when I do get up they have all apparently forgotten
the early morning feeding and want to eat again.  Silly beasts.

Buttercup keeps a pretty accurate internal clock, and always gets up before
I do.  She sleeps with me until about 5:00 or so and then she gets up to do...
well, whatever cats do at 5:00 in the morning.  The really funny thing is
that if she's out of the room when decide to get up, she hears me move the
covers and comes running into the room and leaps onto the bed.  Apparently
she doesn't want me to think that she's slipping at her job of waking me up.
She also comes running (if not already in the room) when the alarm goes off
and I smash the snooze button.
 
For all her silliness and early-morning wake-ups, she's the best roommate I
could ever have.

Yup, they are the best aren't they?

Definitely.  I think she understands me better than any human ever has.

It's a talent they have.  Sometimes they willfully ignore us, but they
also seem to know when we need them.  My cats always come snuggle with
me when I'm upset about something. :)

Harlis licks my hands if I am crying. He also lets me hold him when I 
need to... if I hear some story on the news about animals being hurt or 
whatever I have to pick him up and hold him for a minute. I explain that 
mommy's seen something bad on TV. He seems to understand. :)

Harlis also wakes me up, usually by poking his head around mine. 
Sometimes he kisses me. This is annoying on weekends though... I have 
to nudge him away about 10 times before he gives up. 

I set a live trap last night for woodchucks that have been excavating around
our house, and this morning found I had caught a skunk. I took it to
rural public land and released it. One doesn't often see skunks moving
about since they are primarily nocturnal, but as it walked out of the
trap and away, I was quite impressed with how graceful it was. 

That was very good of you. :)  Skunks are really quite pretty, as
long as you don't startle them. ;) One night when I was living in the 
dorms I was sitting on the hill by Palmer Field and this skunked walked not
five feet from my feet. I didn't move, just watched it walking around.
Was very cool.

Skunks exist in my neigborhood, but I almost never see them.  They can be
smelled at night, and of course they tore up a bit of my lawn digging for
grubs.

Skunks have a very strange, teetering walk.

They "waddle". They are also like cats. We had a pet skunk when I was
in high school, and it would sit on your lap, purr, knead its claws
like a cat, and it used a litter box like a cat.

Finally caught my 'target' species last night - a woodchuck. I transported
it this morning, came back and reset the trap, and have just caught another!
Anyone want a woodchuck?

Some years ago I also undertook to reduce the woodchuck population and
ended up transporting seven woodchucks, two skunks, three racoons (two
caught at the same time!), and one opossum. 

Oh yes...this is the Amazing Animals Stories item, so I should say what's
amazing about woodchucks. Not much. Big honking rodents. But it did
start excavating under what was a concrete patio next to our house
on top of which we have built a deck, and it (or they) had removed several
cubic feet of the gravel that had been placed next to the foundation
for drainage, and even carried it as much as four feet from the hole.
They were burying the outside air conditioner condenser! I did not observe
how they did it - it isn't easy moving that coarse gravel. 

Wow. Wonder what motivated them to bury the condenser? Noise?

No, it was just in the way. It wasn't being run while they were
burying it. They just decided that they were more secure with burrows
under a concrete slab, rather than were they were living, under a
garden shed.

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