The young guy that lived at number seventeen got a kick out of creating a flowerbed.
Although he and his friend were only renting, he’d found that spending time preparing the patch of ground at the front and choosing a variety of plants was a relaxing hobby. His daily grind at the pharmacy, preparing prescriptions was a full-on job and the gardening project had been just the thing to provide an enjoyable distraction. That had been the case until the old guy across the street, who lived on his own, decided to get a dog for company. It was a Jack Russell Terrier. From day one it had been regularly finding its way into the garden where it spent time digging up the flowerbed! Despite all attempts to keep him out, the offending animal kept finding a way in. Naturally, he’d been across and explained what was happening to the owner. This had fallen on deaf ears. In fact, the grumpy old man had been positively rude to him.
That afternoon, his flat-mate found him peering through the curtains.
“Something wrong?”
“No. It’s just the guy across the street, calling for his dog. It’s been gone all day.” He snorted. “The little bugger won’t be digging up my flowerbed in a hurry, I can tell you that.”
“He won’t?”
“Nah. I fixed it.”
“How’s that?”
“I knocked him out.”
“You what?”
“Don’t mean literally, just gave him a nice long sleep last night.”
“How’d you do that?”
“Crushed up a few pills, slit a sausage open and laced it with the powder. He loved it!”
“How’d you know how to do that?”
He grinned. “An Applied Science majoring in Chemistry helped.”
“What d’yer do with him?”
“Put him in the boot and drove out to the truck stop. I found a Ute with an out of state registration. It had a tarp pulled over a pile of stuff in the back. I just released a corner and dropped the bugger in.”
“Ouch! That was a bit cruel, wasn’t it?”
“Not really. I’m sure somebody’ll give him a good home, wherever he ends up.”
He shrugged and shook his head.
“Just hope for their sake, they don’t have a flower bed.”