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Here lies Biscuits, said the gravestone

Chocolate cake to blame for dog's demise

By Shirley TwistPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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Here lies Biscuits, said the gravestone
Photo by Cody Ardell on Unsplash

"Here lies Biscuits, beloved pet of Andy, Sal and Mitch, alas his love of chocolate was his undoing. RIP"

Poor Biscuits I thought, having accidentally uncovered the grave while clearing some overgrown shrubs in my new rental's yard.

Andy, Sal and Mitch had written the epitaph into some plaster before it dried on the side of a plant pot then used said pot to mark the final resting place of "Biscuits".

"I see you've found Biscuits' grave," a voice from over the boundary fence called. Marianne, my new neighbor, was standing, secateurs in one hand, craning her neck to see what I was up to.

I must admit her shrill, inquiring tone startled me and I stood bolt upright bouncing my head on a low-lying tree limb in the process.

"Oh yes, hi Marianne," I blurted, "Yes, family pet I assume?"

"Yes, a dog actually. Very very old when he died. Poor thing was deaf and blind towards the end, kept bumping into everything," Marianne said, edging closer to the fence.

Out of politeness, I mirrored her and met her at the fence. This could take a while I thought grudgingly knowing Marianne's predilection for long, drawn-out expositions and theories about the neighborhood.

"It was a slice of chocolate cake that did for him in the end though," she said, absentmindedly wiping the sweat off her brow, "Chocolate is highly toxic for dogs but unfortunately the kids' grandmother was unaware of this fact."

I really did not want to be having this conversation I thought to myself. I had two weeks' worth of marking to catch up on, a house to clean and hungry teenagers to feed.

It was 10am on a Saturday so said teenagers were still asleep. I'd put some laundry on and started my marking but I'd felt restless and distracted. A bit of gardening in the fresh, winter sunshine was just the tonic I needed, I'd thought. Time to myself was a precious commodity these days.

But I hadn't banked on Marianne having exactly the same idea at exactly the same time nor the uncovering of Biscuits' final resting place.

"Yes, it was all rather tragic. Andy, Sal and Mitch's grandmother ... Gladys, Gertrude, Greer ... a G-name anyway, came over to teach them how to make a chocolate cake from scratch. None of that packet cake nonsense. That's not real baking anyway, is it?" she droned on.

"I said ... IS IT? Are you OK dear?"

I was lost in a mental picture of a chipped, ceramic mixing bowl filled to the top with a rich, brown cake batter and little fingers sneaking a quick swipe while Granny wasn't looking.

"Uh, yes, sorry, of course not. Nothing like baking the old-fashioned way," I said sagely nodding at Marianne's perplexed face.

"Anyway, Granny pops the cake in the oven and an hour and a half later, does the big reveal to much excitement from the kids. They must have been about 10, 8 and 6 at the time," she said.

"Of course they were dying ... I shouldn't say that ... eager to taste the cake but Granny told them it had to cool before it could be iced and decorated. She'd brought 'round a bunch of different cake toppings for the kids to use."

I wondered how much longer this story was going to take and I glanced back at the little plant pot.

I tried to imagine what kind of dog Biscuits had been. A rather shaggy, mid-sized beast came to mind. A Labrador, Standard Poodle, Airedale Terrier cross perhaps.

"Now of course, with Biscuits being a Great Dane," Marianne said, shattering my musings and replacing the picture with an altogether much larger dog, "...he could easily reach his head in through the kitchen window and Granny, being 'old-school' had done the whole 'put the cake on the window sill to cool'."

Big, clumsy Biscuits, blind and deaf but with his sense of smell working overtime, must have been drawn to that window sill like a magnet, I thought.

What bliss to find his olfactory urges yield a most delicious find, a warm, chocolate sponge cake.

In one fell swoop, he'd taken a bite and then done an abrupt about-turn as Granny had shrieked and shooed him away. The kids had burst into tears at the sight of the mangled cake.

"Anyway, that was it. Poor thing dropped dead and that's how he came to be buried in the yard," Marianne said.

And with that, she turned and resumed her decapitation of rogue branches.

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About the Creator

Shirley Twist

Shirley has had a 35-year career as a journalist, editor and teacher. She has been story-writing since she was 5 and her first story was published at age 13. A University of Western Australia graduate, Shirley is married with 2 children

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