"Dammit, woman, how many animals you gots to have in here? Like we is runnin' some kind of zoo."
Daniel Esterwinzle was thinking about celebrating his sixtieth birthday with friends. Neither he, nor his wife Esmaralda, had the means to pay for a fancy cake and ice cream type shindig at the local pub. That meant Daniel would have to have his party at the homestead. No one else would allow them into their precious provincial estates. They found the aroma to be too much to bear.
"Esmaralda? You listening to me? What is it gonna take? We gots something like thirty dogs livin' in this place. And sixty cats. And shit, I don't know half of what these critters be! Is that a pony you keep in the shed?"
Esmaralda took a deep breath.
"No! For the seventh time in recent memory, that is my cousin Carl."
Daniel resisted the temptation to scream out. He couldn't much take it any longer. Something had to give. He wanted to throw an ultimatum at Esmaralda. The problem was, she was the breadwinner in the family. She had won six loaves over the past weekend alone. On top of that, he wasn't even sure how to spell ultimatum.
"What we gots for eatin' tonight? More of them there chickens from your Aunt Patty's chicken stand?"
Esmaralda shook her head sadly.
"All we have to eat tonight is toast. You haven't been making as much money with your tap dancing behind the dumpster routine as you did back in the seventies."
Daniel could only grumble.
He shifted uneasily in his chair.
He ran his fingers through his few remaining strands of greasy hair.
"All I ask is just once... just once can't we have some clean food with no poop? Is this too much to ask?" | 
