According to the terriers…it’s war.

 

Paul, thinking his daughters in fur pajamas might like a treat from the feed store, brought home a pair of pig ears, much to my repulsion.

 

“They’re just so disgusting,” I grimaced, while hammering up yet another broken fence rail, “and full of fat, not to mention a choking hazard if they tear off a piece.”

 

“Wellll,” said Paul, tossing them into the field, “It’s not like Bonnie has any teeth left, anyway.”

 

If you didn’t know Bonnie and her deeply affectionate nature, you might think she was half piranha the way she goes after both food and Rosie, if Rosie is within 500 feet of food. But Rosie is fine with this discrimination. Capitulating fully to Bonnie’s alpha status, Rosie knew, arriving at the farm, abandoned, some 12 years ago, that Bonnie only begrudgingly tolerates her presence, while Rosie suffers great separation anxiety when she can’t find her older step-sister and moons about after her, shadowing every step.

 

I’ve always thought of them as the canine version of Peppermint Patty and Marcie, with Rosie tagging continually behind, asking, “Sir? Sir?”

 

(Don’t worry, Rosie, I hear that Patty and Marcie weren’t allowed to get married in S.C., either.)

 

Those two pig ears lay forlornly in the front field for all of about five minutes before both being discovered by Bonnie, who carrying the first one, gave a threatening snarl to Rosie who approached the second. Off Bonnie trotted into the woods to bury her treasure somewhere, I suppose, relatively near the mummified squirrel haunch (including hairless tail) and chipmunk she tends to bestow upon our front step every couple of months or so.

 

Rosie, peering as best she could with her one eye, for once in her life gave in to disobedience and after delicately picking up the second ear, absconded with it in the opposite direction – the manure pile.

 

Within minutes, Bonnie reemerged from the woods, brown nose telling the tale of covering her respective ear with dirt, spread out evenly by her snout. Following her tracks and heeling the scent of the other ear, she seemed puzzled that it wasn’t where she had left it in the field, and a half hour later, appeared both victorious and smug, having dug it out of the manure pile.

 

Rosie’s eye looked nothing short of bewildered.

 

But there is a reason that terriers are considered tenacious. The following morning as I was cleaning stalls, I witnessed Rosie quietly leaving Bonnie’s side to duck around the back of the barn and head into the woods. Sure enough, it wasn’t much later that I caught sight of her carrying the wretched ear far across the field and into the tree

line on the opposite side. And three quarters of an hour later Bonnie was working the scent back across the field, into the same tree line, before reappearing with the ear.

 

“It’s like the Stone of Scone,” I relayed back to Paul that evening, describing the ancient fight over that Scottish coronation block of sandstone. “But what’s so funny is that neither one knows that the other is physically stealing their ear. They just keep finding where the other has buried it, before burying it again, themselves!”

 

“Well, that’s dogs, isn’t it?” said Paul, opening the cabinet in search of the last few bags of goldfish snacks leftover from the week before.

 

“Where’s the goldfish?” he asked.

 

“Hmm?” I said, pretending not to hear him.

 

“The goldfish? Where are they? There were three packets of them up here, yesterday. Did you eat them?”

 

“Of course I didn’t eat them,” I replied, hotly. “I’ve hidden them because we’ve been eating far too much junk this past week.”

 

“Well, Bonnie,” said Paul, “Would you please bring me back a packet so I have something to eat with my martini?”

 

“Find it yourself,” I said, tartly. “I refuse to be a party to your cholesterol.”

 

“I’ll tend my own cholesterol, thank you very much. Now, where are they?”

 

Too late, I had ducked out the mudroom door before answering.

 

Actually, I had hid the packets behind the boxes of oatmeal in the pantry. Not as bad as burying them in the manure pile, but it would require some digging.