Warming Up

Yup, a pooey start to the day with our sensitive stomached dog. And it looked like it might get worse.

We had another ghostly mystery to contend with this evening. We’d had some friends round for Sunday lunch and had cooked two small to medium chickens for the occasion.

The friends arrived just as everything was ready, so I’d quickly carved the two birds and left the carcasses on the chopping board. I wasn’t sure if we’d try to turn them into soup, so I didn’t dispose of them immediately and in the rush to get everything to the table there wasn’t really time anyway. We shut the pets out of the kitchen, ate some food, drank some wine and had a good time.

When our guests had gone I returned to the kitchen to tidy up. Catie had done all the cooking so it was only fair that I sorted out the bomb site that had been left behind. 

It was a whirlwind of activity but I had to break off to feed Ernie. We decided we didn’t have the energy to boil the bones so the carcasses were going in the food bin. But when I got to the chopping board there was only one chicken there. 

How was this possible?

We have animals in the house, but why would they take only one bird and how had they got it out of the kitchen and away without leaving any evidence behind. The chopping board was thick with chicken jelly and it looked undisturbed and there were no bits of bones on the floor. Wolfie had been locked out of the kitchen and I was doubtful that our cat could carry a carcass through the cat flap or upstairs with no evidence.

There had been two little girls let lose in the house. Had they, for some kind of sick game, taken the carcass and hidden it somewhere? Phoebe said not and neither of them had turned up with guilty faces or sticky hands or chicken bits down their fancy dress costumes.

My wife attempted to gaslight me (admittedly based on evidence of knowing me) and asked if it was possible that I had disposed of the carcass and forgotten about it. But I was sure I hadn’t. I was waiting to find out about the soup, but also I checked the food recycling bin and the carcass wasn’t in there. I ams so obsessed with the food recycling. There’s no way that I would put the chicken in the regular bin. But with my wife successfully making me think I was crazy, I checked the bins three times each and went outside to check the ones out there.

What the Hell had happened?

Had our guests stolen it, to make soup for themselves? Why didn’t they just ask and where would they have hidden it? And who would behave in that kind of crazy fashion.

Had a fox or neighbourhood cat come in and stolen it away? 

Or had someone broken into our house, and made away with one chicken carcass before rushing off into the darkness? Or taking the carcass and eating it in a cupboard as they waited upstair to slaughter us all? But why alert us to their presence by stealing a chicken?

Or was it a ghost? The same ghost that emptied our bins early the other week? Moving a chicken around to fuck with our brains.

Logic said that with a house full of pets and kids there was a more rational explanation but I couldn’t work it out.

I decided to go Noddy: Toyland Detective on this. We have a security camera set up in our kitchen, pointing at the back door. It’s just there because we have it - I bought it thinking it might work as a baby monitor but it didn’t really and it seems a shame to waste that expense, so it just points at our back door, so we can see what’s going on if we’re away and can be bothered to look (which we never have been and I turned off alerts cos they were annoying). 

But now I could review the footage and work out where the chicken had gone. I had started to convince myself that I maybe put it somewhere away from the chopping board when I carved the second chicken. My wife’s gas lighting was working. This was all my fault.

Tantalisingly the video footage covered most of the kitchen but not the area where the chickens had been chopped.

I saw us coming and going, reliving the kitchen bits of the afternoon, but nothing came into the kitchen from outside or left through the cat flap. There was a suspicious hour period between 4 and 5 when there was not footage even though my wife had come into the kitchen after hearing a suspicious noise. Who could have wiped that tape? Not a child or an animal? Was my wife setting me up for this, knowing all along that she was responsible? Like some kind of Sean(n) Walsh she was trying to tell me that I was crazy, whereas she knew it was her that was at fault all along. But what had she done with the chicken carcass and why would she want it? To make secret chicken soup that I wasn’t allowed to have?

I took the dog for a walk. She was happy but still a bit squirty in the rectal area. I was going to have to clear her poo up again in the morning I thought, though had made a decision not to feed her tonight in the hope that that might stave things off til she was better.

When we got back home my wife remarked that Wolfie had looked a bit guilty and she’d been acting oddly in her cage. But hadn’t she been locked out the kitchen the whole time?

I decided to move her bed out of her cage as I thought it might still be damp after I’d cleaned it this morning. As I moved it a piece of lemon and some garlic fell out…. Suddenly I wasn’t worried about serial killers in chicken masks or ghosts. It was the fucking dog. Obviously.

It was then I found out that between 4 and 5 (when the filming was conveniently broken), Catie had left Wolfie in the kitchen and not wanted to lock her in the cage. Trusting that the dog would ignore the food on the counter. To be fair, we were both pretty knackered. It was the kind of mistake I could have made.

But Wolfie hadn’t ignored it. She’d obviously got up on her hind legs grabbed it and eaten the whole thing, spitting out the weird bits inside.

This was obviously a new problem. Not only did I not want the dog eating, but I also didn’t want her consuming cooked chicken bones as that can cause massive problems. But it had happened and google seemed to suggest we sit tight and not contact a vet unless the dog showed signs of discomfort or worse.

She seemed OK to be fair.

And like Noddy I had solved a painfully easy case and it had only taken me three hours.