Monday, April 11, 2011

Ben, the two of us need look no more....

Aurora is often in the habit of pinching an apple from the fruit bowl and losing interest halfway through eating it. She is not, though, in the habit of hiding half eaten apples in a neatly ordered cache behind the fridge.

I got up on Sunday morning, looking forward to sharing a banana with Jocasta. I went to the kitchen fruit bowl and noticed the absence of the banana that I clearly remembered seeing there the night before.

Maude and I had been out for dinner with Harriet and Morten. I drove, so Maude drank. As Maude dozed loudly on the sofa at around midnight, I took the opportunity to have a look at the prize crossword. The paper rustled a little, Maude breathed heavily and something made a scratching noise in the kitchen. I investigated, but saw nothing and presumed that our elderly fridge had developed a new rumble.

I thought no more of it until the following morning. It was then that I saw lack of banana in the fruit bowl and presence of protruding banana next to fridge. This banana had been half-consumed by a small animal other than one of my daughters.

At first we thought that the visitor must be nothing short of a rat to be able to move items of fruit. Maude and I agreed to speak in code to avoid any Aurora panic. We dubbed the visitor ‘Ben’ – a reference to Michael Jackson’s lovely ballad.

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