The dog was monumentally frustrated.
It had spent the last five minutes chasing a chirping ground squirrel (at least the dog thought there was only one—all those damned things smelled alike) through the ice plant, steadily herding the squirrel up toward the road where the smelly little creature would be smushed by a passing car or trapped and caught by the dog itself. Either way, the annoying little vermin would be dead. And a dead ground squirrel was better than a live one.
The dog had almost succeeded in forcing the squirrel up toward the roadway when the little furball leapt down the concrete stairs the dog hadn’t quite noticed, scrabbled a bit on the gravel-covered concrete, dodged the human—what the hell was that doing here—and raced into a conveniently dug hole. The dog was dumbfounded for a moment, not expecting something quite so dramatic.
It was supposed to be easy: squirrel goes into road, car comes, squirrel goes crunch; or, better yet, except for the nasty taste of dirt and dust that managed to entirely permeate the beasts’ little bodies, the vermin is trapped and the dog itself—in a triumph of Canine over Nature, or canine nature over vermin nature, anyway—performs the lethal crunch.
That’s how it was supposed to end. Not with the little devil rushing toward an unfamiliar human and escaping.
The dog moaned its frustration at the ground squirrel, at the human, at the universe. Were the vermin in league with the humans? The dog wasn’t sure, but it wouldn’t be surprised at all if the vermin-human alliance proved to be the end of everything the dog held dear.