i reached back to scratch my arse and found a banana peel in my pocket

It was too much to ask for her child to just be good for once in her life. It was a good thing there was only one. Wylla would have killed the others by now. Or put them up for adoption. Or conveniently forgot them at the creekside. What a shame if a puppy washed away downstream, never to be found again? Next time she'd get Plan B.

"Oh. My. God," she slowly exclaimed as her idiot daughter, bedecked in green Koosh balls from head to toe and dripping at the lips with some manner of sticky sweetness, emerged guilty from the bushes. "Wow, Tiercel!" she gasped, exasperated as the pup slowly spat out whatever goo she was snacking on. "I hope that was poisonous and you have the shits for weeks and have to sleep in the rain alone because your ass won't stop weeping," exclaimed Wylla as she swept several burs from her daughter's dark pelt, then seemed to think better of the wasted effort and stalked ahead to lead Tiercel back in Raptor's direction, still ranting. "Couldn't be presentable for just one damn second, could you? Do you know how embarrassing you are right now?"

Then again, this was a little like taking a dead battery to a braindead salesman to ask what's wrong with it, so Raptor probably wouldn't even notice. "Yeah, a fish," she encouraged, rolling her eyes lightly. "A big, fat, stinking sardine. Doesn't that sound awesome?"