When walking with my dog Venus along her favourite beach, I am always amazed at the plethora of sights: the sandy expanse, towering coconut trees, blue (or grey, depending on the weather) skies, white-capped waves, piles of interestingly-shaped driftwood, loads of plastic bottles, old shoes, pieces of furniture, parts from fishing boats, barnacle-crusted household items and other random odds and ends, inclusive of candles, fruits (possibly prayer offerings), dead fish, dead birds, the occasional skull or skeleton of a dead herbivore (as one can tell from the teeth) and, far too often, dead dogs.

The two dead dogs we saw while walking the beach a few days ago were about 30 feet away from each other, along the boundary where the sand meets the vegetation that carpets the ground beneath the coconut trees. Both carcasses had rotted sufficiently for the skulls and skeletons to be clearly identified under what remained of leathery skin.

I had never considered that skulls could express emotion until I examined the photograph I had taken of one of the corpses. It was as if the agony experienced in the moment of the dog’s death was etched into its now bony countenance – teeth torturously clenched and hollow eyes staring into depths of despair.

“Poison,” I concluded, from experience with dogs that had innocently consumed poisoned food, maliciously placed on that beach or in its carpark.

The dogs and cats that sometimes inhabit that carpark appear overnight, most probably dumped by humans who no longer want them. They are fed by animal-lovers who go daily to walk the beach or by people who sit in their vehicles eating and tossing scraps.

(Do those in-car diners toss scraps for the animals because they want them to have food...or because, despite that being a popular destination for locals and tourists alike, there are absolutely no rubbish bins?)

The dogs develop a sense of trust and are quick to eat whatever morsels come their way – poisoned or not.

Those that are affected fatally by the toxins sometimes run onto the sand to die. Some do not make it that far and meet their unimaginably torturous demise in the carpark where (especially during lockdown, when beach cleaners were not out to work) their bodies swell and attract flies, resulting in maggot-ridden carcasses, which gradually rot and become skeletons.

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Last year two of the various poisoned dogs were fortunate; friends and I found them in time and were able to rush them to the vet's clinic, where they were placed on emergency drips and given the necessary follow up treatment for their recovery.

Based on these experiences, it was easy for me to assume that the two dead dogs I encountered a few days ago had been poisoned.

On the day that I saw the canine corpses, I encountered a friend, also walking the beach. As she too is an animal-lover, I mentioned the grisly find.

"I know," she said, informing me that