Timber!

I sometimes think my life is really dull and boring. You know the thing, you just plod through your days dragging a parent out on a walk whilst looking at trees and fields. When I get back, my brother is usually there readying himself to attack me in the style of the vampiric Beagle that he is. Anyway, this is how it all started on the Saturday just passed.

The parents woke up later than usual and decided it would be a good idea to go for a walk across the fields. It had been raining for the last few days so the ground was fairly wet. Lenny and I knew this meant there would be plenty of mud and puddles to splash about it, as well as drink from. Off we set, going via the alleyway where there is always a black cat that sits there goading us into trying to have fisticuffs with him. We try to entertain the feline mauler but we forget that we are shackled to a human and they are fairly adroit at spotting said furry hooligan. Turn left at the end of the alleyway and up the hill towards the fields. As we go through the gate the pastures stretch away in front of us and we are allowed to roam, pull and wander about at the end of our respective leads. Rabbits scatter for their burrows and the deer in the field to our right look up, no doubt sighing, and wander off to a safer place to eat the farmers crops. Straight through the first of numerous large muddy puddles and we skirt the edge of the woods at the top of the hillock only to come back down to earth and into the first ploughed field. We see another dog along the top path and say hello from across the field, much to the non amusement of the parents. Along the path by the hedge and just as we enter the second field we turn sharp left then right and take a walk around the edge of Penn Grove. More of Penn Grove later in the tail (see what I did there). We arrive at the opening in the hedges where the gravel track crosses, at which point we see the mile field ahead. Let the fun begin. We manage to pull and jerk on the leads so much that the parents are slipping whilst trying to regain some degree of control. It’s only when they notice that we have seen a deer some way off in the field that they realise why we seem to be entering a competition for “Best Sled Dog Beagle Team in Bucks, UK”. Having regained our composure as the errant deer strolled away we navigate our way around the field all the while ensuring that all the muddy puddles are navigated centrally with all our paws as well as the wellington boots of the relevant parent. I am sure they will thank us at some point. We manage to circumnavigate the field and find ourselves near the burn site where the farmer makes ash from various hedge cutting activities. It is starting to rain so the parents decide it’s best to take the direct route along the gravel track, through Penn Grove and back towards home. I give Lenny the nod and he applies the beagle brakes whilst attached to mum. We get into the wooded area and Lenny is still applying the beagle brakes, somewhat to the annoyance of mum and much to my pride, that I have taught him well. Dad and I marched on ahead and suddenly heard this Crack, Whoosh, Thud as a tree in front of us falls directly across our path. Timber! It wasn’t a big tree, maybe 70 foot tall (that’s about 21.3 metres to you metric aficionados). We stopped and looked back at mum and Lenny. They were aghast and agog whilst we just had silly grins on our faces with the excitement. With the swish of his catlike tail Lenny had turned mum around and was walking swiftly back the way we had come, so we could take a treeless detour and not have any trees falling on our heads. When we got to the other side of the horizontal tree we could see that the root was very shallow and very waterlogged. It was now that we heard and saw our pals Charley and Bromley, accompanied by their mums as usual, telling us that a tree had fallen down. Don’t we know it pals, it nearly hit us on the heads.

Home and a race around the garden chewing each others ears was clearly needed. I don’t live a quiet and dull life, sometimes excitement is just around the corner. On this occasion, waiting to fall on my head.