Alvin, Simon, Theodore.

My mother called to tell me
that I couldn't come to dinner
as planned this evening.
She said she had to go visit
my stepfather at their summer house
in the Catskills where he'd been
getting some odds-and-ends done
for the past few days.

"What's with the change of plans?"
I asked in a convincingly concerned voice.

"Craig's a little bummed about his friend," she replied.

It seemed odd that a fifty-five-year-old woman
was heading an hour and twenty minutes north
to surprise her fifty-eight-year-old husband
because he was "a little bummed about his friend."
I didn't ask any further questions about it for fear
I'd find out more than I wanted to know.

"How's the landscaping coming along up there?"

"Good," she replied with a sigh. "The mulch is down
and he bought some new goldfish for the pond."

"What about the weasel that kept eating the fish?"

My mother cleared her throat as if to say
she didn't want to field that question, but would.

"That's what he's bummed out about."

It still wasn't coming together.

"He put some poison out around the pond
in the hopes that the weasel would eat it
but he wound up killing his friend instead."

I'm very supportive of my family and would
stick by them to the bitter end
but manslaughter is another beast entirely.
Not something to be taken lightly, that whole
killing another person thing.

"Mom, is everything OK?"

"Yeah, he'll get over it. It sounded like he
had been crying a little when he told me
what had happened over the phone, that's all."

"Right, but isn't the real issue his dead friend?"

That's when the laughter came. At first I wasn't sure
if it was the maniacal laugh of a sociopath
or a sign that there had been an amusing misunderstanding.

"I'm getting senile, Mike. Sorry. I forgot to tell you
that Craig's been feeding a chipmunk up there
by hand for the past few weeks. The poor thing
must've eaten some of the poison and then Craig
found him. 'I killed my little friend,' he told me
over the phone this morning. If his friends knew
how upset he was over it they'd never stop goofing on him."

"Don't worry. His secret's safe with me," I said
as my hands tapped few choice words and phrases
into the keyboard for later reference.

Don't tell a writer anything you wouldn't want shared.
Don't call yourself a writer if you have the nerve
to start a story with 'My mother called to tell me...'
And for God's sake, don't poison your pets.