Jolly Solly: Junk Mail

M r. Ingleton the environmental inspector frowned. There were still another few months to go until his next round of inspections and yet he was itching to do something about Eli’s place already. It irked him that in all the years he’d been inspecting the animal center he hadn’t managed to find a single violation.

He thought back to the last inspection when he’d tried inventing some trumped-up charges of noise and litter. The ruse had almost worked only Eli’s friend — that ridiculous clown fellow Jolly Smolly or whatever his name was — had gone and notified the mayor. As a result the charges had been dropped and the mayor had even ended up hiring Gimpel the goat to help keep the city’s grass trimmed in some of the harder-to-reach areas.

Every time Mr. Ingleton passed the munching creature he had to restrain himself from hitting it. After all the goat was now officially an employee of the city wearing a shiny disc with the city’s logo to boot. Bah!

As the inspector leafed through the papers on his desk an idea began to dawn. Hmm. It was true he couldn’t check Eli’s place at the moment in his role of city inspector. But what was to stop him doing it under another guise? He’d pretend he was representing some big organization to make it sound more official and this time he’d make sure to throw the book at Eli. Hah!