Annie's Treasure Troves

There’s a cry goes up every morning in the Lollipop house – “Muuuuum! Where’s my socks?” The answer used to be easy. Either they were in the top drawer (where they have always been kept, but only Mum remembers) or, if they’ve been worn for five minutes and then taken off again, they were in the same place they’d left them (but, of course, that’s a mystery as well).

These days, though, there’s another possibility. Out in the garden there are three piles of miscellaneous rubbish. One is under the clothes line, one is by the swing and the other is in a hole under the bottlebrush tree. Now when socks (or shoes or undies or favourite soft toys) go missing, the first place we look is in the three piles of miscellaneous rubbish. For these are where Annie keeps her ‘treasures’.

No one ever sees her snaffle them from the house, but she’s got a lovely big mouth and she keeps her head down as she sneaks out. The other day, she came running to me at the car with a stick in her mouth. As we walked back to the house, she found a bone. Rather than drop the stick, she pushed it further back into her mouth and picked up the bone up as well. Then she found a piece of pipe about two inches in diameter. Aha, I thought, you’ll have to make a choice now. But no, with a bit of manoeuvring she managed to lift that as well. She carried them to one of her favourite spots and dropped them in, then looked at me as if to say ‘Says who?’

We’re beginning to wonder if she’s a Retriever or a ‘Pincher’ (Pinscher).