Dog

One guy inherited a tiny plot of land and

there was an old vintage threshing machine

sitting on it, so he broke it up and burned it

and for a while he brought his kids over to

the plot and had picnics there but he seemed

to have got bored with that until one day

he came with a dog and put the dog on a lead,

tied the lead to a post and he leaves the dog

there now, all day and all night. Of course he

comes to feed it once a day but that’s it,

and the dog is quiet some of the time but most

of the time it barks. It barks at birds and there

are magpies and pigeons and turtle doves and

buzzards coming over, it barks when it hears

other dogs which is quite a lot of the time

because a lot of the people around have dogs,

and it barks when it thinks there are mice or

rats or voles or snakes or wild boar or badgers

or foxes or deer and plenty of them are coming

through and it barks at owls and there are the

screech owls and the tawny owls and the little

owls all around and it barks if you make a noise

like ‘Yeah, get in!’ if you score a goal, and it barks

at motor bikes and it barks at fire engines and

ambulances and it barks at flies and wasps and

hornets and it barks at spiders and butterflies

and moths and bats and beetles and caterpillars

and ants and it barks when it hears a walnut or

hazelnut or an apple or a pear or a plum or an

acorn falling off a tree and it barks when it hears

itself barking.