The mighty hunter – AKA Natasha – finally caught her prey today, but it did not work out as planned.

We had finished hiking and were sitting on Waterrock Knob (check out either here or here if you want to know where I am talking about) on the Blue Ridge Parkway enjoying the view and drinking water.

Natasha spends her time with her head cocked and hunting for prey. Despite all of the intensity, and the training provided by her Mama-Bear Nikita, she rarely actually comes up with anything. Of the hundreds
of pounces she has done, she has only delivered half of a bug to me many times (gee, thanks), but nothing of any real substance.

As we were relaxing and enjoying the view, a beautiful butterfly flits by. I am enjoying the colors of the butterfly, and don’t notice that Natasha is watching it intently. Suddenly – POUNCE! She caught it.

She turns to me with pride to show off her mighty hunting skills. Nikita is looking at her with what could only be described as pride.

Suddenly, Natasha gets a real funny look on her face.  For the next 5-10 seconds, she is looking at me and opening and closing her mouth. I am thinking that maybe she was choking when, suddenly, her mouth opens and the butterfly flies out and away unharmed. All I can imagine is it kept flapping its wings and Natasha couldn’t figure out what to do next. The look on her face was absolutely priceless.

Nikita, meanwhile, turns around in shame and realizes how much more Baby Bear Natasha has to learn.