On the path, the long path to the top of the hill and back, there sat a dog. This black dog had no name, for his was a solitary soul, unowned by human, unclaimed and unattached. He would sit throughout the daylight, leaving this spot only if hunger or thirst claimed his attention, or if another canine stepped nearby.
His health was good, for now. He had seen females come and go, admitted some dogs, painfully quarrelled with others, but above all the exposure of life upon the hill had yet to take its toll. Indeed, he seemed to thrive in the heat and rain of summer and each year felt his coat growing thick for the chill nights of winter. For a stay-put stray, master of the moment and keeper of his hours, life was good.
The quiet woman who daily laid out food, for reasons he knew not, took her job seriously – he admitted her with big round gratuitous wags of the tail. Without her kindness he would need travel far, leaving this familiar spot to risk encountering other packs from around the villages. Her kindness, therefore, kept him alive – kept him safe.
But one day the woman was gone and the food was no more. Patient for a week, his greying face turned in the empty direction of her approach, but it was for nothing. He half-heartedly jumped at the stupid monkeys that gadded about between the limbs of forest canopy in a vain attempt to catch one off guard. On another day he found the remnants of a hiker's lunch beside the seats at the beginning of the trail. Abandoned by the other casual strays, and realising that he was by now a little thinner, and that weakness was near, he set off one night alone towards the nearby village at the bottom of the hill.
On the last bend of the road in the orange sodium streetlight glow he made out the large, dark structures of the bins. He knew that within the clumsy lidded trash containers would be deposited the casually discarded tins, bones and other food detritus of human habitation. His hunger by now great, he sniffed and snuffed, but his initial inspection was interrupted. In the midnight glare of the lights there appeared the Bull – his massive front haunches pulling the rest of his black hulking body up the road towards the forest. As he nimbly stepped out the way the bull walked on regardless, side-eying the solo dog with the intimidating and menacing nonchalance only an alpha bovine can set. The bull stopped and gave a gutteral bellow, an ugly repeated throat low that pierced the night clad hillsides all around.
Hardly had the bull passed, when from within the trees the sweated smell of pig wafted in. Careless in their pursuits a hog and sow thrashed through the large foliage of the roadside bushes and poked their long snouts towards the tops of the bins. He had at first an instinct to chase away the porcine pair, but waited in the shadows watching their movements.
The boar took three steps back – BANG!! – the impact of the pig rocked the full bin on its small, plastic wheels. He repeated the motion, stepping back and charging once again. This time, the bins momentarily teetered and then fell back, the lid flying open with the final impact of hitting the ground and causing a cascade of domestic dog barking from within the vicinity. At once both pigs set to, ripping apart the black bin liners for the stinking morsels of garbage. He approached, a solo dog of some renown, but was checked by the pale amber eye of the sow. She instantly froze, bringing her mate to attention. He maneuvered towards the end of the bin and the three eyed each other viciously. All of them tense, it would take but one movement to bring them together in a decidedly one-sided fight, something the dog only now realised. As one the pair charged: a wall of bristling pork bearing down on him with such rapidity he hardly had time to turn before they were on his heels.
When he cleared the zone and repaired to a rocky culvert beneath the roadway he realised he had not been quite so lucky – a large gash was open low on his hocks. He licked and stepped in the slow-flowing stream of mountain water, but he knew it would trouble him.
Fortune had not favoured him, but with a moments rest he would return and turn over what they had left – his snout fitted for the innards of cans and his paws excellent holders for more delicate retrievals. But as he thought this in the total blackness of the drain, his keen ears heard, to his side, the soft abrasion of snakeskin on concrete – he knew he was not alone.
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