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When Marie and I took our pre-retirement from the RATP (subway system, Marie was in administration, I was an mechanic), we found a charming little house over by Villeparisis. Everything was perfect. A little garden in front where Marie planted lettuce, radishes and green beans. She has a green thumb, my wife, and when she is in the garden hoeing and digging her lettuce, she is so happy that she forgets all about her aching back.

Me, I spend most of the time at the Train Station Bar with my new friends; belote (a card game) and OTB… the good life.

The only glitch is the youth in the neighborhood.

The good for nothings, who never miss an occasion to make trouble; they always try to pinch our garden tools or, like last month, the battery charger that I left on the door step. These adolescents… it’s a crying shame!  Where is this country going? I don’t even dare to think about it.

That’s the reason that we went to the ASPCA at Gennevilliers and adopted Adolf. Adolf is a 12 year old German Shepard, as gentle as anything with us, but nasty as a hurricane with these lowlifes and rude gypsies.

The only concern about Adolf is that he is slightly obese. We can’t stop him from eating everything that he finds, weird things like  tennis balls of the neighbors. Adolf does it in one bite. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am!

Then, about two weeks ago, one of the young jerks tossed an live hand grenade over the fence; they probably found it at the abandoned army barracks at Goussainville. In any case, not skipping a beat Adolf swallowed it, like it was a bar of chocolate. A few seconds later when he exploded, the poor mutt, there remained only pieces of charred meat and a few brown and gray hairs stuck to the cinderblock of the garage. At that moment Marie came up with a monumental idea.  Marie’s brother, Gilbert, lives over by Etretat and one can easily say that he’s a great fisherman. He knows the coast like the back of his hand, he knows all the fish in the region and he can practically call them by their nicknames.

In any case, last weekend we went to visit him and we worked fast. Two hours later a fish was well wrapped in a wetted down, old burlap sack and we were on the return road for Villeparsis.

Let me explain our idea. The fish in question is a small shark from the “Dogs of the sea” family. You get the picture? A dog of the sea, we surmised, would make an excellent watch-dog.  And boy did we hit the nail on the head. Immediately on returning home I got out an aquarium from the cellar, filled it with water and installed Henrich. (It’s the name that he was given because of his little nazi eyes.)

Yesterday morning when I was taking out the garbage, I saw to what point Henrich was efficient.

Some little truant clearly wanted to snatch something during the night, not noticing that Henrich was on guard.

A sock with a lot of blood and two toes cleanly cut off.

We are finally going to have peace at 14 bis rue Jacques Duclos at Villeparisis.

Believe me, the Dogs of the Sea, it’s the future of our security.