At dawn the telephone rings.
“Hello, Senor? This is Ernesto the caretaker at your country house.”
“Ah yes, Ernesto. What can I do for you? Is there a problem?”
“Um, I am just calling to advise you, sir, that your parrot died.”
“My parrot? Dead? The one that won the International competition?”
“Si, that’s the one.”
“Damn! That’s a pity! I spent a small fortune on that bird. What did he die from?”
“From eating rotten meat.”
“Rotten meat? Who the hell fed him rotten meat?”
“Nobody, Senor. He ate the meat of one of the dead horse.”
“Dead horse? What dead horse?”
“The thoroughbred, Mr. Lucky. He died from all that work pulling the water cart.”
“Are you insane? What water cart?”
“The one we used to put out the fire.”
“Good Lord! What fire are you talking about, man?”
“The one at your house! A candle fell and the curtains caught on fire.”
“What the…..!!! But there’s electricity at the house!!! What was the candle for?”
“For the funeral.” “WHAT BLOODY FUNERAL?!”
“Your wife’s… She showed up one night out of the blue and I thought she was a thief, so I hit her with your new Tiger Woods Nike Driver.”
SILENCE…
“Ernesto! If you broke that driver YOU’RE FIRED!”
“Hello. Hi Honey. This is daddy. Is mommy near the phone?”
“No Daddy. She is upstairs in the bedroom with Uncle Paul.”
After a short pause, Daddy says: “But honey, you don’t have an Uncle Paul.”
“Oh yes, Mommy says I do and he is upstairs with Mommy in the bedroom right now.”
After a short time, Daddy says: “Okay, then this is what I want you to do. Put the phone down on the table, run upstairs knock on the bedroom door, and scream that daddy’s car just pulled into the driveway.”
“Okay Daddy, just a minute.”
A few minutes later the little girl comes back on the phone.
“I did it, daddy.”
“And what happened, honey?” Daddy asked.
“Well, Mommy got all scared, jumped out of the bed with no clothes on, and ran around screaming. Then she tripped over the rug, hit her head on the dresser and now she isn’t moving at all.”
“Oh my God!!!! And what happened to your uncle Paul?”
“He jumped out of the bed with no clothes on, too. He was all scared and he jumped out of the back window and into the swimming pool. But I guess he didn’t know that you took out the water last week and cleaned it. He hit the bottom of the pool and I think he is dead.”
*Long pause …*
The daddy says,
“Swimming pool? …. Is this 486-5731?”
