There’s Meat on the Bone

A Ratty News Investigation

By Roderick “Whiskers” McNibble
Chief Investigative Correspondent, Ratty News

It began with the Great Dog-Fence Summit.

Two dogs.  One fence.  One bone. A great deal of barking.

And one Red Dog who looked at the whole performance, walked around the fence, and went about her business.

That reminded me of a nursery rhyme.

Knick-knack, Paddy-whack, give a dog a bone.

I had sung it. I had never inspected it.

That was slack reporting. 

There were questions.

What is the bone?

Why do dogs fight over it?

What exactly is Paddy-whacking?

And who is the old man who comes rolling home?

I started with Paddy.

This seemed fair.

Paddy is an Irishman living in Australia who, with no regard for my artistic take on things, actually calls himself Paddy.

“What does Paddy-whack mean?” I asked.

Paddy looked at me.

“I didn’t write the bloody song.”

I wrote that down.

I decided not to ask what he was whacking.

There are limits to responsible journalism.

Some bones are best left in the rhyme.

I then spoke to Rusty Dog.

Rusty came to Australia from South Africa and knows more about dogs than Paddy knows about leprechauns.

“What do dogs want with a bone?” I asked.

“Another dog’s bone.”

“What if there are plenty?”

“Then they fight over the one they want.”

“Why?”

Rusty looked at me.

“Because the other dog wants it.”

That seemed important.

So I went looking for the bones. I found them behind the fence.

There were plenty. More than plenty. There were piles of them.

I counted seventeen.

In the yard, the dogs were still fighting over one.

They did not appear hungry.

They appeared busy.

Guarding is not the same as eating.

I went looking for the old man.

The rhyme says he played one.

Then two.

Then three.

And then he came rolling home.

Why rolling? Why not walking?

I found him on the Social Media. 

He was, in fact, rolling.

In money. 

He had a very large sack.

Behind us, the dogs started up again.

The old man kept rolling.

That was when I found Red Dog.

She was standing beside a barbecue.

On it was a lamb shank.

A proper one.

Hot.

Meat falling off the bone. She turned it over.

Then I understood. 

I looked back at the junkyard.

The dogs were still fighting.

Red Dog looked at them.

Then she looked at me.

“It’s here,” she said, “if you choose to eat it.”

She did not tell them to stop.

She did not take the bone.

She did not explain Paddy-whack.

She cooked the lamb and left it there.

I went back to the fence.

Seventeen bones.

Still there. Still guarded. Still uneaten.

I looked at the dogs. Then at the old man.

Then at the sack.

The dogs were still fighting. The old man was still rolling.

Paddy still denied any involvement in the whacking.

Rusty still had opinions. And the lamb shank was still there.

Nobody had forced anyone to give up a bone.

Nobody had forced anyone to eat the lamb. It was simply another choice. You see, dogs already know how to fight.

Knick-knack.

Paddy-whack.

Give a dog a bone.

And somewhere down the road, the old man is still rolling home.

I have not yet got a full inventory of his sack.

I have a suspicion.

There’s meat on the bone.

And unless we change the dog, we are not going to see it, eat it or enjoy it. Because we are too busy chasing the bone.