Velveeta and Bob: Destiny and Truffles

(Part Two of  A Tale of Two Lentils )

Velveeta and Bob were a team when they went shopping. Bob was a special sort of dog, with powers beyond the usual sorts. He’d been the runt of a litter born to a well-known television personality bitch who’d co-starred in a 1950′s family comedy show. His mother had rejected him and her owners feared the worst: loss of income. For who would buy this little dog of the famous mother if word got around about this rejection? But Bob had made his own way, and in a surprising manner.

Bob had become a truffle dog. A self-trained truffle dog, to boot. Nobody knew exactly how it all started, but by his third month of life, Bob was digging up truffles where no truffles had ever been found before. This was in California, of course – so nobody was all that surprised, simply because, well . . . this was California, and all things were possible.

But Bob loved truffles so very much that when the ground was barren he took to attacking the refrigerator in the mansion where his owners lived part-time. It was the truffled pate he wanted, the truffle oil that was spooned onto scrambled eggs, the shaved truffles carefully saved for pasta. And this, was beyond the pale. Truffle-dog he may have been, but it was much more important to his owners that the refrigerator front surface remain pristine and elegant. So they took Bob to the pound, and that is where Velveeta found him – as she visited the poor strays to delight them with a few pounds of raw chicken livers left over from her latest cooking project.

She and Bob locked eyes the moment she entered the gated area, and that was that. History was made. Their love affair started with that one, single, startlingly instantaneous and knowing glance. She took him home that very day, only to discover his truffling skills upon entering her kitchen. Bob, without a moment’s hesitation pawed open her cupboard door and chewed apart a small tin of truffle shavings in oil.

Destiny. It could have been nothing else.

(To be continued . . .)