Thief

A dog with a smooth golden coat just walked out of a building with a piece of buttered bread in its mouth. A man and a woman stood by and laughed at the dog while I watched silently from a balcony. As it passed by me, I noticed rows of swollen nipples drooping from its underbelly. My eyes followed it about a hundred feet, until it disappeared into a gap in the wall on the far side of the road.

I looked elsewhere, but then in my periphery, the dog returned to view. Bread still locked in its teeth, it jumped atop the wall and trotted back in my direction. When it came to a gate, it paused for a tic and then jumped to the other side. From there the dog descended into a field of sugar cane across the street from where I stood.

Propped up against the wall in the corner of the field were about twenty tall bundles of sugar cane leaves. As the dog arrived, two small puppies with exactly the same golden coat emerged from the dark, protected gaps between these bundles. They followed their mother to the middle of the field, jumping at her teats and — when she threw it on the ground for them — pouncing on the piece of bread. As puppies do, they took opposite ends and nibbled at it. One would occassionally try to tug the bread away from the other, but lacking any real strength or determination to do so, they ended up dividing it pretty much equally and then laid down at their mother's side.