This post could have been an uplifting story about two severely deformed carrots from our garden who – after being cruelly rejected by humies and Beanie & Biggles – finally gained acceptance in the mouths of Monkey and Poppy.

It isn’t though. It’s about the short and violent life a potato, because at our house some potatoes have it hard. Really hard.

The potato in question started out in one of our raised beds. Its formative months were fairly uneventful, save for the minor disturbance of Beanie jumping into the bed and having a rummage, and a couple of times when we should have watered the mother plant but didn’t. We’ll never know whether it was Beanie’s rummage or our lackluster watering or just plain hard luck, but when the potato came out of the ground, it looked a little iffy and went straight into the reject bin. As it lay peacefully in the bin maybe the potato was feeling relief that it had dodged a trip to our kitchen, but something far worse was about to happen to it.

Poppy seized the potato out of the bin, sprinted to her favourite toy dismemberment area in the garden and took a big chunk right out of the middle of it. She continued to maim the potato for nearly a minute, before Monkey took an interest and a chase began. The potato was carried in Poppy’s mouth for the first few circuits of the garden, but after a rugby tackle from Monkey it was dropped and forgotten as the pups chased purely for the sake of chasing.

Round..

..and round..

..and round they went, quite oblivious to the fallen potato

When the chase finally stopped, Monkey remembered the potato that had started it all, and went in search of it. Using his amazing nasal powers he found it and subjected it to a further round of abuse. Poppy remembered the potato too, and tried all her tricks to regain possession of it. She crawled up to Monkey and rolled around seductively, but still he kept hold of the potato. She tried to goad him into another chase, but he didn’t budge and didn’t release his prize. There was just one more thing to try…

Still unsure of quite how the whole humping thing works..

Poppy tries both ends of Monkey

Dad help! I’m trying to have a potato and Poppy’s doing really weird stuff!

Since this event we’ve imagined how things might have played out if Monkey hadn’t been a Beagle: the call to the abuse help line, the visit from the police and the supportive officer asking “if it’s not too upsetting Monkey, can you show me on the doll where Poppy touched you?”. There is of course no help line for Beagles, still less for potatoes, and can you imagine a more disturbing way for a potato to shuffle off its mortal coil than being chomped in the mouth of a boy who’s being humped the wrong way round by his “big” sister who’s actually much smaller than he is?