The Bingley Triangle

Have I mentioned Bingley's tendency to think with his mouth? Everything he finds is immediately sniffed, licked and almost always chewed. Ordinarily we keep a close eye on him and make him empty his mouth; but more recently this has become trickier. Now when he finds something he fancies he quickly takes it back to his basket; and he's becoming a more determined hunter! When we clean out his room in the evening we now find sticks, leaves, stones, coal, and on more than one occasion a snail - all stashed away for that midnight chomp after we've gone to bed. His basket is quickly becoming known as 'The Bingley Triangle', and I'm sure that it won't be long before we start finding our own belongings in there.




But at the moment coal is probably his favourite find, though any stone or pebble will do. What is the allure? I can think of nothing worse than chewing on a stone - just the idea of a stone scraping across my teeth gives me goose pimples. But a lump of coal will eventually crunch up, so there must be an added appeal there. We've had an open fire for many years now and inevitably some of the coal has migrated from the bunker, and Bing will spend an eternity scrabbling into the furthest, most inaccessible, corner just to get hold of the tiniest lump of coal. Coal comes from wood and B's sharp teeth will break it down quite easily (though the sound of coal being crunched isn't, believe me, at all appealing), but it still goes in the bin if I discover it first; though I must admit that I feel a bit guilty about casually disposing of all his hard earned finds.