Borrowing Food: Minimal Length of Stay!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/minimal/

Health Warning: Do Not Eat when reading this! It is somewhat animal, in every sense of the word!

Many’s the tale I have told on here about my beloved border collie, Jumble – and, oft have I had cause to comment on his somewhat omnivorous nature and unwise, nay repellent, consumption.

Regularly, also, do we read about the Drunkard’s Dubious and Disgusting Art of borrowing refreshment, both liquid and solid, for short stretches of time before, as it were, repaying his  – or her: girls get pissed too, you know! – nurture, usually all over the street some moments later!

Bring these two gutter habits together and what do we get? Yes! Jumble’s latest – and, this time, I am ashamed to admit that it was ALL MY FAULT.

So: rewind to Saturday and the final day of the 2017  Six Nations, a nail-biting seven hour period with all six teams playing one another off the board, so to speak, with the England versus Ireland game being the true decider. It was decidedly inclement without – and, to be frank, I was in no mood for interruptions and had every intention of getting seriously square-eyed.

The dog’s feeding time passed by and it was only as the now infamous half hour scrum (okay, broken up from time to time by an increasingly fraught-looking Wayne Barnes) between France and Wales came to its bottom-aching end courtesy of a try followed by a conversion from the French, that I started up and rushed to the hound’s empty bowl.

Why, then, I now ask myself (with a teeth-gritting ‘the hell’ in there somewhere), did I eye up four eggs, which were approaching their sell-by date and would otherwise go to waste, and add them, raw, to the dog’s daily bowl of crunchy doodads?

What was I thinking of?! It took the minimal amount of preparation, always a plus, and went down in the minimal amount of time as well.

Canine companion sorted, I turned on the television once more and was soon gripped by the Titanic struggle between Owen Farrell and Co and the Men in Green.

What was this I could hear issuing from a near distance, however? Borborygmi of truly breathtaking decibelage and a decidedly rank odour emanating from the Man’s Best Friend.

I tried to tell myself that it was just a distant volcano cranking itself up for a bit of lava overspill, but, by this time, my eyes were watering and the poor dog was retching.

Out he went forthwith – and, with minimal fuss, multicolour-yawned all over the back garden. Five times. Believe me, I checked. One of the more unpleasant moments in a long and event-rich life! Definitely a case of better out than in.

As he ruthed, I was in and out like a fiddler’s elbow, checking the rugby score and making sure the animal had left no metaphorical stone unturned in his unloading operation and, as a side issue, that he wasn’t about to start firing from both cylinders!

The magic, if egregious, five piles proved to be enough for him – and, restored to his usual cheerful self, tail wagging happily, he lay down on the carpet as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile, the injuries on screen were growing by the minute and England was in serious trouble.

But I knew where my duty lay. Tempting though it was to hope that a squadron of local vultures would descend upon the garden and clear up the problem for me, I knew that the whole sordid mess was my fault and that I would need to get it sorted. Pronto.

A thoroughly disgusting quarter of an hour ensued, during which I nearly jettisoned my own lunch and England lost out on a back-to-back Grand Slam, but, by the end of it, the garden was egg-free. As was the dog!

But, as I shivered and shuddered out there, it occurred to me how very minimalist and unfussy animals are about this sort of thing. So unlike us! They don’t require a sick bucket, cold flannels, Lucozade by the gallon, a loving mother or their temperature taken every hour on the hour. Nay, nay: They just get on with it!

Served me right.

I am, however, off eggs at present. Can’t imagine why!