Every day the trash truck comes around to collect rubbish from bins on the wall outside each house. Our bin is on the wall just outside the side gate. It is the best time of the day for the dog, the signal for him to hurl himself at the gate and do his job. Sometimes, in the covered side porch with walls on two sides it sounds as though he has managed to raise all his ancestors who are arraigned at his back, each one of them joining in, generations of suspicion of the man-at-the-gate expressed in a blood chilling volley of barks like kalashnikovs. I suspect it is also the high water mark of the day for those guys in the truck.
They have perhaps two minutes to hurl abuse at each other, the trash guys to vent all their frustrations against their employers, against the people who put things they shouldn't in the bags, and above all against their job in that smelly, filthy truck, before the trash bags are hoisted into the truck and it leaves. But I think the dog has the best deal of all. Twice a day every day, he struts his stuff and scares the living daylights out of those men, and you know what? They have never dared to come in, not even once.
Can there be any greater job satisfaction than that?
