Lupine behaviour

This weekend, Delta, Davis and I went to one of the nicest little Cuban restaurants I've ever been to. Your typical family-run establishment, just barely six tables squeezed into a tiny room, grandmum cooking in the kitchen, daughter waiting on the customers up front. When the food came, it just smelled so darn good, I dove into my plate with gusto, and left the conversation to the boys.

I hadn't even noticed how assiduously I had been ploughing through my food, until suddenly I heard a clink, and realised that my fork had made contact with empty plate. I pushed the plate away from me, and glanced up at the boys. They were barely half way through their meals.


Delta raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Boy, that was a serious plateful of rice. You just wolfed it all down."

As usual, I missed the point and got entirely sidetracked by the wrong detail. "I wonder why they say 'wolfed' it down," I mused. "I mean, there must be animals that eat much more and much faster than wolves!"

"Hmm, not sure," Delta conceded, thrown off course by my sidebar.
"Wolf it down?!" Davis interjected, "isn't the correct phrase to woof it down, I mean like a dog barking?"
"Eh?" I grunted (Delta, ever the more polite one, said "oh, really?").


I was fairly sure I was right, but inasmuch as there'd been debate, I decided to come home and do some nifty googling. And confirmed my original belief: Incase you had any doubt, dear reader, (other than this designer dog boutique), the world still seems to have consensus around using the old lupine analogy for such displays of gustatory haste.