Thievery without Conscience

Once or twice a summer, we have the Boy Scouts to swim: an exuberant bunch of mid-teen boys, who arrive vibrating with anticipation, and spend several hours splashing, yelling, diving, and pretty much being boys, in the pool. As part of this, we make a cookout: burgers, brats, hot dogs, and one of the things that mothers avoid: dessert to excess. We know that sugar plus male adolescence makes an even more exciting time, but we do it anyway.
This cookout, we had 15 scouts, three semi-portly scout masters, one Scout master wife, and the dogs, who could be counted on to make noise, get underfoot, and be tired enough by the end of the day to sleep deeply. We also had 5 pounds of jumbo hot dogs, 5 pounds of brats, a vat of potato chips, 7 12-packs of assorted soda, and 6 boxes of Hostess cupcakes, Twinkies, Suzy Q’s, and Zingers (chocolate and salt are an unbeatable combination), though we did include a large bottle of ketchup (lycopene?) for health.
We’d set out the cookie trays of grilled meat and refilled the largest mixing bowl (the one I use to bake bread) with potato chips. The boys descended on the food, were silent for ten minutes, swinging their water wrinkled toes at the picnic table and the patio umbrella table. Then the thrash and bustle began: back to the water, jousting, diving, jumping and thrashing with all the energy accumulated in a few minutes of quiet.. The adults sat in fat-embedded satisfaction and watched. Water sparkled, sun shone: we were mostly all happy.
Just then, we saw something we could not believe: a whisk of movement at the umbrella table. Rosemary the dachs was on the table, scrounging among the plates. Before we could reach her, she removed the remainder of a jumbo dog (more than the length of her nose) from someone’s plate, jumped from the table to the chair, to the patio, and trotted past us, the jumbo dog projecting from her mouth. Rosie and hot dog rounded the corner into the grass, where she feasted on her ill-gotten treat.