If you're going to have a watchdog, you've got to pay attention to him.

So here I am a short bit ago, doing some work on the computer. I hear Lagniappe in the kitchen starting his trademark whiny growl that indicates that a non-human creature in the yard has caught his eye. (He has a different and totally unmistakable reaction to people on the property.) I of course, having heard this from him several times a day, every day, figure that it's just another of the neighbor's many cats walking across the yard. I tell him to knock it off and try to tune him out. But he keeps it up, so I yell at him again. THEN I look out my office bay window and see the three deer standing in the yard not twenty feet from the house. Two are busy defoliating the saplings and the third is looking right at us. Before I could get to my camera, they sauntered off.

And as I watched them go, Lagniappe walked in and looked at me as if to say: "I toldja..."

Yeah, ok. That's one for the canine.