20140918_165752Being a dog, I love ferreting about. Most late afternoons you can find me sniffing around the base of freshly watered pot-plants. It must be the dry weather because I’m really beginning to love the scent of wet earth and I’ve digressed into some of my, dare I say it, puppy habits-digging. Oh yes there is nothing better than a big, juicy hole. The earth spinning out like a mini twister and the randomness of discovering ancient treasure, a bone perhaps, deposited eons ago like some ancient mummified feast. My mouth’s watering.

Of course pearls like that are hard to come by so at dusk, just as the pelicans begin to settle on the creek, I head over the levee bank down to the water. Sneaking up on the big birds is pretty easy and they seem to take fright instantly and impressively. Lots of wing flapping and noise and then they’re off swooping down the creek. Nothing like getting a bang for your buck. Once they’ve gone, the waterway is

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mine and its fossicking time. Of course I have to play fair, what with Jill and the ankle-biter close on my heels but there’s enough good stuff laying about to keep the fights to a minimum. Creek mussels make for an easy dig as they’re usually only partially stuck in the sand. And there’s a bit of nosing about to be had with the piles of timber that have been left on the banks by previous floods. Makes me wonder how far that old wood has been carried and the sights it may have seen along the way as it floated along. Maybe some other dog stalked around it four hundred mile away or perhaps it was buried deep in the mud and hasn’t seen light for a century. Either way, this is my pile now. Paws off.

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