Once upon a time, there was a girl who bought a house in the country. Her first winter in the house, she trapped a lot of mice. And once the dogs even had to finish off a partially trapped but not quite dead mouse. And then spring came at last to the Little House on the Hill and the girl anticipated a lot of carnage out in her big, beautiful, wild yard. But as nature would have it, one of the dogs was still on a lead instead of roaming free. And somehow the other dog hadn’t caught the rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs, and deer she had been chasing vigilantly. The girl figured once there was a fence and the two dog team was on the move, the carnage in the yard would increase.

One day the girl had worked hard all day and finally sat down on her couch to eat a late dinner. Suzie was hunting something in the corner near the boxes of china that still hadn’t been unpacked. The girl assumed it was a fly, her usual prey in the house. Suzie kept shifting over the china boxes, knocked over a box of trim, and still was trying to get at something! Finally, after 20 minutes, the girl stands up and moves the boxes just to show the dog there’s nothing to get. Before she even sees anything, the dog has caught and killed the chipmunk and it is lying there on the floor, quite dead.

The girl questioned where it came from, how it got in the house, why the dog had to kill it right in front of her. And of course, there aren’t really answers to questions. You see, living with killers has it’s downsides, but the upside is that there wasn’t a random chipmunk running around the house anymore and the girl didn’t have to do anything to end it. All she had to do was clean up the carcass when it was all over.

So the girl still waits for the yard carnage to begin in earnest, but in the meantime, there is never a dull moment living in the country… with killers.