The Kitchen Beagle

Beagles are not just great in the garden. They are also very helpful in the kitchen. A beagle owner knows they rarely have to mop the floor because as soon as something falls of the bench top, the chances are a beagle will have scoffed it before it even lands. Unless it is lettuce. Or cucumber. In that case, a beagle will leap up from across the room to beat the other beagle to it, then chew it a bit and spit it back out on your floor.

Beagles also think they are equivalent to the "pre-rinse" cycle on your dishwasher if you turn your back for just the right length of time while stacking dishes.

They also ensure you have a tidy kitchen at all times, because, as beagle owners will tell you, anything left within a certain distance of the edge of the bench, or dining table, is fair game for a hound. Also sometimes if you don't quite push your dining chair in quite far enough, anything on the entire dining table is fair game.

Today as I was chopping up my tomato harvest to make sauce, I found a tomato with a bug hole in it and accidentally dropped it on the floor. I managed to get to the tomato faster than Mustard (surprising) but a big tomato-coloured grub fell onto the floor. While I was contemplating how I was going to pick the thing up without actually touching it with my bare hands, Mustard had a better idea. He ate it. And he looked pretty pleased with himself, too:

Just another job in the kitchen well done, by a beagle!