CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
A prominent Greek grandmother from Betoota’s Flight Path District has today declared that she isn’t messing around when it comes to her olives, it has been confirmed.
After almost a year-long feud with the neighbourhood dogs who feel the need to mark their territory on her beloved gardens, Yiayia has had to draw upon decades of disproven pseudoscience to defend her pride and joy.
“No more” she remarks, as she realises that the loving-but-stern barbs directed at the owners of these dogs from her concrete patio have been to no avail.
“I take this into my own hands”
The seriousness in her tone is cause for alarm, as her visiting daughters and grandchildren beg her to not do something she will regret.
But the final straw has already broken the camel’s back. Her quiet, contemplative mutterings suggest something drastic is about to happen in the light industrial suburb of Betoota’s East End.
“I warn” she says.
Her extended family sit helplessly as the proud Mediterranean matriarch opens up her cupboard of makeshift tupperwares, mostly made up of plastic take away containers and bottles.
“Yiayia! No. Don’t do it” says her granddaughter.
Cold as ice, Yiayia responds.
“Too late” she says.
“I warn”
Yiayia, of course, is talking about the old Greek-Australian theory that dogs are terrified of excreting near a contained body of water.
It’s a wild old migrant conspiracy that has seen rose and olive gardens littered with perspiring old Coca-Cola and Mount Franklin bottles filled with tap water – From Oakleigh to Marrickville, to West End.
Yiayai then makes her way towards to garden hose behind the fig tree, and begins filling up her recycled plastic water bottles.
After the satisfaction of filling up the first bottle in front of her family, she then begins micromanaging.
“You!” she says to her youngest grandson, intentionally not using his name to assert her seriousness.
With grandson filling up the rest of the water bottles, Yaiyai makes her way out on to the street and begins placing the dog-repellant water bottles across the 1 x 1 metres square nature strip. Everyone in the street now knows that a certain neighbour has trouble discipling her dogs.
