Starling Pond Let the ducks eat crumbs!

The raccoon watched from the safety of the tree branches as two would-be lovers sat down on the bench beneath her. He, young-ish, hair smelling of mangoes, scuffed shoes. Her, reasonably good chemistry student, bright future, weird taste in guys and, turns out, pizza. She opened the pizza box, letting the smell of grease, cheese, pineapple and salty fish waft up into the night air. He recoiled. She apologised. He said something about anchovies and pineapple. She said something about it being her favourite. He left. She put the box down and gave chase. It was never to be.

Alice, surprisingly gracefully for a raccoon of her size and weight, hopped down from the branch and onto the bench. Eager little hands wrenched the lid of the pizza box open and, there it was, the perfect start to an evening in the park. A more sensible creature might have grabbed a mouthful and ran, but Alice simply tucked in, pulling it apart with hands and teeth, shaking it about, thoroughly savaging the thing, scattering crumbs of pizza and chunks of pineapple about the bench. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

As far as she was concerned, there was only her, and the pizza. Her pizza.

If the wolf had learned anything from his 11 years of life, it was that humans were kind of dumb and most of them didn’t seem to know a wolf from a really big, fluffy dog. Well, that was kind of what wolves were anyway. Fig was lucky that he was sort of big-normal wolf size, because then that really just made him a big dog. He’d met some guys that were really, really big, and that didn’t allow them a lot of freedom on the streets. Fig needed freedom.

This park was great because it was close to home and pretty big, and the pond was the best part because it gave the earth in the immediate vicinity this exquisite dampness that was just perfect for what he needed. Fig found a little copse a little off one of the pond trails and was shoving his two front feet into the dirt at the same time to act as a shovel so he could dig. This meant he would occasionally face plant into the dirt, which was a delight, so he never tried another strategy. The hole eventually became a more-than-reasonable size, was quite damp, and so it served its purpose. The wolf rolled around it it. It was really as simple as that. The regret would come later when he was encapsulated in damp dirt and shivering. That was for future Fig.

Or no Fig. The ruckus of humans froze the dirty wolf in place and his dull eyes shined in the dark trying to quickly pick them out. Quick footsteps and the faint aroma of a very smelly pizza made him abandon his hole. Maybe it was the anchovies, but he hadn’t really picked out the big raccoon in the equation, who was enjoying the pizza when he arrived, creeping up from behind the bench and rearing up on hind legs to peer over at the feast for one. His golden eyes were wide, tongue lolled, and his nose seemed to let loose a small spray of dirt with each heavy exhale.

With a chunk of pizza hanging out of her mouth, slowly dripping it's precious contents back onto the grease-soaked cardboard, Alice turned her gaze upwards to look at the new smell. Having managed to - some might say purposefully - avoid meeting a wolf, she had developed quite a particular mental image of what a werewolf ought to be like, mostly informed by films, a bit of time spent searching online and a healthy amount of fear. The reality was more big-dog than savage-killer, all tongue and nose and wide-eyes and why did he have dirt on his nose?

After quickly finishing up the bit of pizza she was enjoying, Alice meticulously wiped her own paws down her front, then reached out to try and brush some of the dirt away from the nose of the wolf.

Fig eyed the dripping pizza, gooping onto the bench. This pile was made for him. The raccoon could have the trash part of the pizza. He would get all the delectable protein. His eyes dropped fully onto the pizza and his ears perked forward. He moved in for the kill. But the raccoon moved first. His nose was touched by the tiny human-like hand of the smaller creature. It scrunched and his teeth showed. Not in aggression, just surprise, as one would probably express when their nose was touched by a raccoon.

He opened his mouth, leaning forward to try and trap the raccoon’s hand between his incisors.

Alice made the mistake of pulling her attention away from the wolf for just one moment as, while there was a wolf, there was also pizza and she couldn't help but keep glancing at her cheese-coated treasure. When she turned to look back at the wolf, she saw the closing mouth of the wolf, where her hand was, and tried to pull it away - just a moment too late. What the wolf clearly didn't realise, as far as Alice was concerned, was that she had two paws capable of grabbing and stuffing pizza into her mouth, and so she focused on what really mattered.

Stretching towards the pizza, she used her free paw to tear free part of it, not as much as she'd like, shoving it into her mouth while she had the chance.

Impossibly delicious and incongruous flavours washed over her tongue. No pesky facts about wolves, jaws, bite pressure or the very real risk of injury could take this moment away from her, Alice hoped.

The raccoon didn't even try moving and now Fig was stuck there with a hand in his mouth. He didn't bite down particularly hard, but it felt weird leaving his jaw microscopically slack. And then the tiny-handed mammal didn't even seem to care about the fact that he could just bite off it's hand!

Pizza looked good though.

Fig snorted and tentatively began to actually close his mouth, applying pressure to the wrist with his smallest teeth. The hand was already in his mouth and he didn't actually want to bite it off (who actually knew if raccoon wrists were particularly strong, though, right?), but it was the principle of the matter or something. Newt would not approve. But Newt also lounged snoozing passenger seat, so his opinion was not enforceable.

The rather unpleasant sensation of teeth pressing against the wrist - her wrist! - shattered the pizza-induced reverie, demanding her immediate attention. A careful, considered and co-ordinated approach to the situation would have been to try and gently pull the hand free of the mouth, yet what actually happened was more of a scrabbling, frantic movement that resulted in her paw not going much of anywhere at all. There was only one option left to her, which was to play dead.

Alice let her whole body go limp, slumping down face first into the pizza, leaving her paw in the jaws of the wolf. It was plainly obvious that she wasn't dead, as her tongue kept darting out of her mouth to lick at the greasy pizza toppings.

Fig had to bend his head down as the raccoon slumped forward, deceased. Stone cold dead. A pizza-scented corpse. He released her hand, no longer needing it, and sniffed at the body. He gave a startled little huff when the tongue darted out, and he sniffed again. So, not dead. His dirty tongue lolled out and dragged up the front of the raccoon’s face. Wake up. Oh. Pizza taste though. He licked again and then tried to sniff around her to get the slice in his teeth and pull it out from under her.

It was hard to be certain whether the big-wet-wolf-smell-tongue lick across the face was supposed to be a slightly misplaced act of kindness or merely a way of stealing her precious pizza grease. Either way, it certainly had the effect of making her move again, flailing about with her paws, in much the same way a squirming child might try to push away an adult trying to clean their face. I don't want to be clean. I want to be one with the pizza!

The pizza shifted underneath her as Newt deployed his teeth again. Startled by the sudden movement of her pizza bed, Alice scrambled backwards, on to the bench, briefly relinquishing control of the pizza.

This was his now. He sauntered backwards, sliding the carby mess onto the dirt. It made an unpleasant slapping noise as it ended up where no pizza ought to: the dirt. Having been a playground for a raccoon being irritated by a wolf, it didn't look much like a pizza anymore.

Fig had had pizza one time before, and it had been wrapped in foil which really made it taste awful. This was much better. He went to work just licking the top of it, taking out most of the sauce and just shoving the cheese around.

From her spot on top of the bench, Alice was treated to a great view of the wolf eating the pizza wrong, all her hard work getting licked apart. At first she settled on merely giving the wolf the hardest possible stare she could manage from the relative safety of the bench, but seeing that the wolf was lost in the pizza - her pizza - she clambered down from the bench to get down in the dirt with him.

And so Alice lay down on the ground, so close to the pizza and the wolf she could smell them both, and gave him the stare. She couldn't fight the wolf, but there was no way she'd let him eat it without expressing her rather impotent rage.

Pasty white, soggy bread licked clean of all of its sauce. Some of the cheese laid out in the dirt. He felt the dead stare of the raccoon pouring into his forehead. Lifting his head, Fig beared his teeth and moved around the pie, away from the raccoon, to pick up a pile of cheese. He teared at it.

Alice had already felt a bit of what those teeth could do and recoiled slightly at the sight of them and, as the much larger wolf moved about to get a better shot at the cheese, she saw what could be her last opportunity to salvage something from this pizza. Reaching out quickly with her grabby little hands, while the wolf worked the cheese, Alice tore free a piece of pizza crust. It was cold. It was already getting dry. It was a small, rather disappointing victory.

But it was a victory nonetheless. In a rather awkward two-legged run-waddle, Alice fled from the scene of the crime, carrying her pizza crust close to her chest.

Fig struggled to work the cheese in his mouth. He scraped it against the top of his mouth and snapped his teeth against it. This was awful. It tasted great, but how was he supposed to eat it? In his frantic attempt to eat the lactose-heavy slime, the raccoon scampered off. She was already well on her way when he finally looked up. Goodbye then.

He finally swallowed the lump, barely chewed, and began to pant as he felt it snowball through his system. He was done with the pizza now. Back to whatever he’d been doing before this.