It’s been “all change” at Beagle HQ over the last week. We’ve finally retired some of our oldest office furniture and replaced it with new stuff, and that of course has meant some intensive flat-pack assembly sessions.

In the past Biggles has been my go-to companion for this kind of work; he rarely gets in the way, and even the most poorly designed assembly guide seems easier to handle when his furry head is studying it right next to mine. If things get a bit tense he diffuses the situation by rolling onto his back to display his bits, and if that doesn’t work, you can’t beat a well-timed sulphur-heavy fart. Unfortunately this time around it wasn’t Biggles that came to help me, but Beanie, and she isn’t a good assistant at all. You see it’s not the assembly of the kit that interests her; it’s the disposal of all the paper, cardboard and packing materials, and she’s hell bent on doing this before the item in question is built. Turn my back for a minute and all those little bags of screws, bolts and washers are shredded – their contents strewn all across the floor – and important chunks are missing from the instruction leaflet.

Biggles should have been my assistant on my recent flat-pack marathons

But instead I got this..

Eventually I just had to frogmarch my little “helper” out of the room and close the door. Yes, to my shame I actually had to exclude the Beagles from the room designated as “Beagle HQ”. The exclusion was temporary however, and they got to be the first to check things out once all the sweating and swearing was over. Only time will tell if the chinrests on the new chairs (incorrectly described as “armrests” in the documentation) will pass muster!

For a while now I’ve been signed up to what seems to be the last DVD rental service in the UK – CinemaParadiso. Each time a new disc arrives I make popcorn and have a screening in what I refer to as our “posh” lounge, so named because it’s had less exposure to Beagle vomit and bum-wiping than our other rooms. While the popcorn guarantees that I’ll start off with two Beagle watching partners, usually a short way into the movie I’ll be down to just one: if the film is a horror, it’ll typically be Beanie, and for sci-fi it’ll be Biggles.

It makes sense that Beanie wouldn’t be overly fond of sci-fi movies; they’re often filled with beeping noises which can be very scary to little Beagle girls, whereas blood-curdling screams are just fine. As for Biggles, well I didn’t honestly think he had any particular aversion to horrors – until I watched “The possession of Hannah Grace” the other night. I didn’t find it to be a particularly scary movie, but Biggles apparently did; shortly after the start I heard him whimpering softly from the other sofa. When I made room for him next to me (which wasn’t easy because I had to shift Beanie up a bit), he came over like a shot and wouldn’t relax until I’d wrapped my arm right round him to provide both a cuddle and a chin rest. Ironically he’s the one who most often looks possessed – tickle that big white tummy of his just right and his eyes roll back in his head like a scene from The Exorcist.

Speaking of horrors, Beanie has proved once again that she is one, by tearing up a new plant we’d got for the back garden. She’s got form for this kind of thing; as a puppy she was a serial flower-killer, but we were hoping that she’d grown out of it by now.

Directly after planting she was keen to examine our work and did nibble a bit of compost (who wouldn’t?), but a cautionary “Oi! I’m watching you!” put a stop to that. Nearly a whole week passed without any further incidents, but I suspect that – as with TV’s Dexter Morgan – Beanie was trying to resist the urges of her “dark passenger”. Suddenly one evening the dark passenger won, and in the aftermath I found bits of plant and soil strewn all over the patio. No dirty paws or mucky snouts were in evidence, but the frenzied nature of the attack made it clearly a Beanie crime scene. The plant hadn’t been simply dug up – it had been ripped out of the soil and shaken like a Polaroid picture. Once a plant-killer, always a plant-killer!

In Monty Python’s Life of Brian a character called Reg (John Cleese) asks: “Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”

Well now there’s evidence to suggest that they did something else of note: they created the conditions necessary  for the development of the Beagle in Britain. Next time your socks get modified with nibble holes and that cup of hot chocolate you put down a few minutes ago isn’t just empty, but suspiciously clean, don’t blame your Beagles – blame the blummin’ Romans!

Now I’m not suggesting that it was the Romans themselves who selectively bred the naughtiest dogs they could find until they eventually produced Beagles. That’s absolutely not the case! However it would appear that they brought rabbits to Britain, and in doing so they set us on a path that ultimately resulted in the creation of the rabbit’s nemesis: the Beagle.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/apr/18/ben-fur-romans-brought-rabbits-to-britain-experts-discover

On paper Beagles certainly should be good rabbit/hare hunters; they have world-class sniffing gear and they’re remarkably agile, persistent and resourceful. I have to admit that Beanie possesses these traits in abundance…

Unfortunately I have my doubts about Biggles; he does well enough with the kind of rabbit that’s stuffing-free and has a big squeaker in its head, but when he’s in the presence of the other kind – the kind that can move all by itself – he just keeps his head down and avoids eye contact.

Could it be that he’s afraid of the real thing? Perhaps another quote from Life of Brian applies here..

Biggles: He’s not the messiah of rabbit hunting, he’s just a very naughty boy!