We were somewhere south of Lakeview, OR, driving down a two lane highway in the middle of a sea of sage brush and wild grass. I pulled off onto a narrow gravel road so we could stop and stretch our legs.
We milled around for a little while, and I was lucky enough to find the remains of what I thought might be a Western Meadowlark. It was a crime scene: a few feathers here and there, then a partial wing a few yards away, and then further down a whole pile of feathers and a few bones where the final kill and feast had taken place.
I was busy picking through the remains for the best feathers when Bluebell (my dog) came prancing out of the brush with something in her mouth. I thought at first it was a bird, then maybe a rabbit, but no, it was too small. Then I thought it might be a chicken breast, but that didn’t make sense. When she came close enough I could see that it was half of a burrito. There was lettuce and tomato sticking out one end and the other end was a neatly folded tortilla. It looked to be in pristine condition, as if just cut and served. What in the world it was doing out here in the middle of nowhere was a mystery fit for television. We were a good 200 yards from the highway - it could not have been thrown out of a car window.
This is what I imagine happened: Someone bought a burrito in Lakeview, drove thirty minutes out of town while eating half of it, pulled onto this gravel road, drove a tenth of a mile, stopped and took the burrito out into the brush and laid it down as a gift to the heavens, then drove away. We must have arrived shortly thereafter to beat all the other critters to it.
I said, “Bluebell, if you eat that thing you’re going to throw up in the car again. Drop it!” I chased her around a little bit, but she wasn’t giving it up, so I went to look at some cows that were looking at me. On the way back to the car, I was happy to see that she was burying it. She had pawed a small area under a bush and laid the burrito down. Then she nosed some dirt and dry twigs over it. The joke was on her, though, because we were never coming back here. Poor thing, she probably looked for that burrito for the rest of our camping trip.
Which made me think: we should start a blog page for things our dogs have brought in from the outdoors. If my dog can find a freshly cut half burrito in the middle of nowhere, then imagine the possibilities!
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