Down The Hatch

Today I took the two borzoi girls for a long walk, about 4 miles all told. At the end of the walk, just as we were turning up our road and in the last couple hundred feet, both girls (true hunters that they are), spotted something moving in the leaves on the side of the road.
Usually, if it's too small to be a squirrel or rabbit, it's just the wind rustling around a dried leaf. Not this time. As the girls about yanked me off my feet to investigate closer, I saw a small black mouse dart out of the leaves, about two seconds before it disappeared.
In the blink of an eye, I saw the last half of the poor little critter's tail go just like a piece of spaghetti across Rowan's lips and down the hatch.