Sam - hard hitting journalist

Sam had seen a lot of things in her career as a middling journalist for a dying paper reporting on a parochial game played in a city on the edge of a continent at the bottom the world. She could mix it with the big hitters like Seymour Hersh or Jason Burke or Christine Amanpour, she knew that.

For some journalists, it was the low thud of a car bomb in the Baghdad haze that got the adrenalin racing. For others, the thrill of grilling the Prime Minister. But nothing made Sam happier that asking a nervous 19 year old a series of leading questions in the hope he’d blurt out something about his private life.

The scene near the dingo cage was one of chaos. She could see Sheedy, naked except for a pair of tight fitting shorts, handcuffed and propped against a wall. Periodically, like some great enraged beast, he would struggle against his bonds, but without success.

She approached one of the police.

“What’s happened here pal?”

The officer looked her up and down, saw her My Little Pony notebook with pencil poised,

“Nothing much to be honest. The old fella’s been on the sauce for the last few days. We reckon the stress of being around Richmond again has got to him; he’s had some sort of breakdown. It’s like in his mind; it’s the 80s again, like he’s gone back to a time when he was happier. When we got here he was saying he had to stop the dingoes before they took the baby. That’s what he kept shouting. The dingoes are going to take the baby.”

“He wasn’t trying to, you know, be sexual with the dingoes?”

The cop looked at her with a mixture of disgust and derision.

“What? No. Geez, the old blokes had a pretty rough time of it lately but rooting a dingo? Nah, nah, you’re barking up the wrong tree there.”

Sam walked away and was about to phone her newsdesk to let them know the story.

Just as she put the phone to her ear, it rang. She looked at the screen. Caroline.

“Caroline! Where are you?”

“Shhhhh, not tho loud,” Caroline said down the line. “Go over near the monkey enclothure, I’ll thee you there.”

Sam followed the signs and arrived in a heavily wooded part of the zoo complex, the hoots and jabbering of caged primates filling the air.

“Over here, thith way Tham,” she heard Caroline whisper urgently.

The frond of a fern waved. Sam went over and saw Caroline crouched behind it.

“Thith hath to be quick. I’m in hiding. We need to kill thith Webecca thtory. I need you to help me.”

“Of course Caroline, I’ll do what a can,” Sam said, relieved to see her mentor.

“Thith Theedy thtuff, I need you to thex it up, thay you have a thource that thays he actually wath trying to thcrew the dingoeth. Turn it into a animal wighth itthue. Call into question Wichmond’th attitude to animalth. Call up one of those animal wighth nutterth and get them to thay they shouldn’t be allowed to uthe the tiger as their mathcot any more.”

“OK. I’ll see what I can do boss,” Sam said.

“You’re the betht Tham,” said Caroline, retreating into her jungle redoubt.

Sam made sure she was out of earshot of any police before she rang the newsdesk.

“Yep, hi it's Sam. Look, this is a big winner, this is big stuff. Cops are trying to hose the story down but I’ve got a source that says Sheedy was up to no good with those poor defenceless dingoes. I want the front page. I’m going splash on this,” she said.

Two hours later and Sam stared contedly at the lead paragraph she had crafted for the story - Dingogate as she was referring to it in her own mind.

“Former Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy was today arrested by police on suspicion of attempting to rape a dingo after the Richmond figure embarked on a terrifying drunken rampage at the Melbourne Zoo.

"Although no schoolchildren were present at the time, hundreds of children visit the zoo every day, any of whom could have been attacked, and possibly eaten, by the crazed Sheedy.

“Sheedy, who is understood to be wanted for questioning by The Hague over possible involvement in the Rwandan genocide, has a long association with canines like the dingo, having owned dogs as pets previously. The fate of these previous victims is not yet known.

“Sheedy’s arrest throws into a harsh light Richmond’s attitude to animal welfare. A spokesperson for the animal rights movement Roar!, Mr Ren T’Aquote, said the club should be stripped of the right to use a tiger as its mascot and all players on the list forced to donate half their income to the Lost Dog’s Home."