Law and Order: SSVU (Sweet, Sweet Victims Unit)

The other night I went out to sit on the front porch pew while Hick was on the way home. I usually give the dogs an evening snack. It's usually a bit later, after Hick has already fed the chickens, and after our supper is done. So...I was a bit early going out the front door, and I caught the dogs in the act:

If you look closely among the chicken feathers (Jack plays a little game with the chickens called, "I won't kill or eat you, but I will make sure you get plenty of exercise"), that's an egg laying in front of Jack's feet. Don't be so hasty to blame my Jacky Boy. Juno has one of her own, in her mouth. Uh huh. Jack saw me and pretended he wasn't doing anything wrong. But brazen Sweet, Sweet Juno actually picked her egg up and tried to abscond with it hidden in her jowls. Except there was nowhere to go.

She laid down in the side yard with it for a few moments. But one of the roosters was onto her shenanigans. You can't see it in the grass, but she left it there. Probably went back later for it. I tried to get a picture with her laying there, facing toward the left, with the egg between her paws, when she saw that rooster...but she was too quick for my new used phone camera.

Both dogs ran to the porch for their treat. I can't remember what it was that night. Probably the last three of the frozen mozzarella sticks left from the Super Bowl (two for Juno, one for Jack--cut up). Hick came up the driveway, and Jack ran to bark at him. He's aggressive like that. Hick got past my guard dog and came to sit in the rocking chair that he got me when Genius was an infant, which he insisted on putting on the front porch when we brought home my mom's piano, when Genius was 20, away at college, and liked rocking in that chair about as much as he did when an infant: not at all.

"Don't look now, but I caught your dogs with an egg. Each. I was hoping that was the golf ball you used to put in the chicken house, hoping to make them sit on the eggs, but it's still right down there under the yucca plant."

"Them dogs! I knew they was eatin' my eggs! I hardly get any anymore."

"Well...you DO let them roam around the yard. So you never know where to look for them."

"Yeah. That's how I find 15 or 20 all together, and don't know how old they are. Then they're no good."

Hick went to feed his chickens."

"Right there! In the side yard? That's where Juno left her egg."

"I see it. You dumb dog! It's an egg all right. I'm trying to tell if it's green."

"I DID throw some old eggs off the back porch on the weekend. They were from the store. About six of them. Maybe they found them around back."

"That's a white egg. Not mine. We haven't had chickens that lay white eggs for years now."

"So they DIDN'T get your eggs."

"No. Not this time. But they will!"

So quick to accuse. My precious pets were only doing their part for the environment and disposing of garbage that I had flung on the ground. They really need to get a better attorney than Val.