Stories / Transcript

For Your Listening Pleasure: A Dingo That Sings

December 27, 2006 from All Things Considered

ROBERT SIEGEL, host: A dingo is a type of wild dog found in Australia. Dingos are not cuddly creatures and they have not had a good press, chiefly because of an incident some years back when a dingo was accused of stealing a baby, a story recounted in the movie "A Cry After Dark.”

Independent producer Larry Massett was recently in Australia and there he had his own off key encounter with a dingo.

Unidentified Man: Here we go. Come on, Dinky. I know you’ve done four shows already. So let’s get up and go. That’s a good boy. Thank you for getting up like that.

LARRY MASSETT: Dinky is a dingo. He lives in a bar, a roadhouse, in the middle of the Australian desert. He’s a medium sized, shorthaired, ginger colored animal, much like the one that ate Meryl Streep’s baby. Only Dinky, according to the owner, can sing.

Unidentified Man: Maybe you can sing for us a bit? Oh, all right.

MASSETT: However the dingo will sing only if someone plays the piano. I don’t know why I volunteered.

Unidentified Man: All I ever ask people is please do not touch him. All right. So you don’t touch. You don’t eyeball, and he just -

MASSETT: So the dingo was just standing on the keys of the piano, waiting. And I have my hands down between his legs, worried about touching him or making eye contact. And what to play? Nothing comes to mind. Nothing.

Until suddenly, of all things, this pops out.

(Soundbite of ALL THINGS CONSIDERED theme)

(Soundbite of Dinky howling)

SIEGEL: All the way from the Australian outback, Dinky the singing dingo, and his accompanist, independent producer Larry Massett.