Signs--Good, Bad, Bald?

When life gets trying--and boy has it been trying the past few years--I find myself looking for signs that things are going to get better.  You would think I would have learned my lesson a year ago. The morning started out like any other morning.  I got up and grabbed the dogs' leashes for our morning work.   The sun was just beginning to rise in a grayish sky.  I remember hoping it wouldn't rain as I struggled to put the coats on the two squirming dogs. It was chilly and I knew they'd be shivering without them.
Grin, Tallie and I stepped out the door and immediately I got more than a shiver up my spine.  I could feel eyes watching me.  Creepy eyes.  I glanced up from the dogs and saw 12 turkey vultures perched on the roof of the house directly across from mine.  In the sky another dozen were flying lazy circles over the houses.  As if this weren't disconcerting enough, when I turned around (yes, I considered fleeing back into the house), I saw 5 more turkey vultures sitting on my roof looking down at me!
For those of you who have never seen a turkey vulture, let me give you a brief description.  They are huge, ugly birds with a wingspan of about 5' with grayish feathers on the bottom and a red, almost bald head. 
They are scavengers.  I saw no dead animals and the dogs certainly didn't act like they smelled anything dead.  This did NOT seem like a good sign.  What were they trying to tell me, "We've got our eyes on you?" "You're dead meat?"
I looked to the basenjis.  They were ignoring the vultures completely and were pulling against their leashes wanting to start their walk.  In that moment it came to me that I could go back inside and curl up in bed or I could follow my dogs' example and get on with living the day.   What the heck, we were already outside --all with our coats on--so I just laughed at the birds and carried on.  I like to think the dogs were proud.

Dogs and Squirrels: Sometimes Life Gets Nutty

A Rottweiler ran out into the road to greet Grinner and Pilot while we were walking yesterday.  He scared the heck out of me, but luckily he was very friendly.  The incident did get me thinking about all the encounters with "wildlife" my dogs and I have had over the years. 
I used to live in town and would walk my then two basenjis each morning at 5:00. I was always afraid I'd lose one of the basenjis if I dropped a leash from my still groggy hands, so I kept Phoenix, my escape artist, on a leash which snapped around my waist.  That left both hands free to control Mad Max who fancied himself a sled dog.  
One morning I heard a crashing sound in the tree above us. Before I could even look up a squirrel juvenile with half of its tail missing FELL out of the tree, landed on my head, slid inside my jacket and clawed its way down my back and left leg before making a terrified escape onto the ground. 
I'm still not exactly sure of the sequence of events, but Phoenix on my left tried to climb up my legs to catch the squirrel as it scampered down.  Brave Max, who was on the right, did his best to defend "his girls" by circling and lunging at the squirrel.  All of his efforts might have been more effective if he hadn't been on my right while the squirrel was doing its death spiral done my left leg. 
In the amount of time it took me to scream like a girl, I had two dogs' leashes tightly wrapped around my body and one firm conviction in my brain--I had RABIES and maybe my poor dogs did, too! I could feel the squirrel's marks on my back even as I disentangled myself--not an easy feat while Maxi was still convinced he could kill the squirrel which had run right back up the tree it had fallen out of.  Soon I realized my hounds did not have a scratch on them. No canine rabies! Good. Now I would be the only one to die and I had time to write a will in which to provide them a good home.
In spite of my scream when the squirrel hit my head, no one came out at 5:00 AM to see what all the fuss was about. (Later I would remember that and wonder just how safe it really was to walk my dogs alone that early.) However, right then the only thought I had was to find someone who could tell me how many squirrel bites I had on my back.
Unfortunately for my neighbor, she arrived on the street walking her Pit Bull a minute later.  I think I scared her worse than the squirrel had scared me as I frantically called across the road for her. Bless her because she took pity on the crazy woman rambling on about rabid squirrels and did check my back after she stopped laughing. 
Apparently squirrels are not known for viciously attacking people--who knew?  What I thought were bites were merely scratches from the clumsy youngster's paws.  She assured me I would not get rabies and so did the four other women who I checked my back at work.  Still I was leery everytime we passed that tree from then on though Max and Phoenix always looked forward to reaching it.  I think until the day we moved they thought it was a squirrel slot machine, and if they waited long enough, one day it would rain squirrels on them again.