gemfyre | I'm not sure if I should laugh at this or not.

I hear a fluttering outside. The doves do this often. I hear it again and go outside to see the commotion is. I can't see anything in the trees. Then I hear the fluttering below me. Phantom has a dove, or more, she doesn't have it, she's just chasing it. I yell at her and dash downstairs and outside, locking the cat door as I go. I look at all the feathers outside and look for Phantom, eventually I find her, she doesn't have the dove. I stoop down to her level and see where she is looking. I spot feathers in the shallow ditch around the garden and assume that's the dove. I grab Phantom and put her inside. Go back outside and approach the dove. It panics and flutters away near the fence. I approach it slowly and reach out to grab it, it moves again, behind a bush. I try again and manage to get my hands around it. Getting out from behind the bush is awkward because there is barely enough room for my hands, poor dove gets squashed a little as I extract it from behind the bush. I stretch the wings out looking for injuries (apart from massive feather loss). Spot a tiny bit of blood beneath one wing. I ask mum to get me a box and my car keys, I'll go take it to the vet. From what I see it doesn't seem awfully injured and will probably survive (I'm not sure about vets but I know at fauna rehab we weren't allowed to re-release non-natives like doves, I hope vets also have this policy, in which case this bird will have to be incacerated all it's life and who wants a common spotted dove? They probably just put them down, it's not worth the effort to save a bird that really is just an introduced pest). Anyway, I digress. Mum gets the box and my keys. She opens the box and I go to place our poor dove in the box. It struggles and slips out of my hands. Flutters off and flies into next door's yard. *sigh* I hear this thunk as it hits the fence then the ground and cringe. I hear the girl next door say something to the dog next door. I consider asking her if she can get me the dove so I can take it to the vet. I then see the dog with the dove in it's mouth, now surely dead.

Oh well... This is where I start to giggle though. Phantom making a scapegoat of the dog, typical.