Unwelcome surprise

Now that the leaves have all fallen off most of the trees around here, we have found a rather interesting item. It is some kind of paper wasp nest. It is quite large. Probably the size of a mis-shapen basketball! As soon as the weather turns considerably colder and we are sure that the occupants are "dormant" we will remove it.

Our dog has also noticed the nest. She was outside with me yesterday when a group of crows flew overhead making a bit of a racket. She tilted her head up to look at the crows when she spied the nest. She is a rather smart dog, but I'm sure that she didn't recognize it for what it is. She probably just noticed there was something that was different than the rest of the tree.

When she gets excited the hair along her back, from the tip of her tail up to the top of her head, stands straight up! It is about 3 inches wide and I think it looks funny. Some people are totally intimidated by her appearance when this happens, which is what "Prancer" has in mind, I'm sure.

So Prancer and I are standing in the yard and her hair is standing up and she is doing this funny little dance of prancing from one front foot to the other (hence the name Prancer), staring up at the nest in the tree and making this strange guttural growling sound. One of my neighbors happens to be walking by and keeps looking at the dog and finally looks up in the tree. She asks me if I know that there is a large nest of some sort in my tree and I answer "yes". She then proceeds to ask me what is wrong with my dog. I pointed to the nest and said that the dog had also spotted the nest and didn't know what to make of it and perhaps the dog thought that this nest was some kind of critter such as a squirrel and she wanted to play with it and chase it around. My neighbor then states that she doesn't think it resembles a squirrel at all. DUH!!!

Some days it just doesn't pay to have conversations with some people!