"Oh, Henry dear," Margaret said, startling me from behind as I sat transfixed at the kitchen table in the warm air bath of rotting aardvark meat which was to be our dinner....

"The Cravendorfs?" I said, indignantly. "Why would I want to associate with that lot? On my birthday no less!" I was incensed. Sure, I had forgotten that today was my seventy-seventh birthday, but the sting of the prospect of having to spend it with my hideous neighbors over a platter of broiled anteater was too much for my weary mind to process. I am a calm man, not prone to outburst. But Margaret was testing my limits. The only question was, why?