The humble yet decidedly high-strung Town of Lamont suffered yet another blow to its already battered municipal psyche when word leaked out that their doggone Mayor was not, in fact, the last (or preferably the only!) one of his decidedly questionable bloodline and/or the product of some shady and largely ill-conceived adoption where his lineage was not traceable and thus hopefully beyond identification. This unsettling news became widely known after the town's penultimate busybody and renowned 'nose bag', Erma Snopes, age 63, found the Mayor's front door open and decided to explore his temporarily unoccupied abode and found an incriminating family picture in his printer tray, insiders report. "Well, there I was, minding my own business when the next thing I knew I was rifling thru the Mayor's sock drawer and rummaging thru his clothes closet, just to make sure that he was okay and all" said the ever-present Erma while attempting to eavesdrop on a muted phone conversation coming from next door. "Anyway, after spending several minutes in a frantic dash to explore as many places as possible before the Mayor came home and immediately called the ever-efficient Sheriff, I inadvertently ended up in his computer room and that is when my eyes naturally gravitated to his printer tray. Oh, I could not believe my eyes! We just always assumed that he was an only child since - well - it just wouldn't be natural otherwise. Nature normally don't allow those sort of things, if you know what I mean! (Yes, hope does spring eternal, but it is often wrong!!) Will we as a nation ever be free of that clan and their insidious, big city ways?" she stammered while clutching her tattered apron to her largely bloodless lips. "One of them people is certainly enough - but a whole doggone brood! And they are all ages, too! (Sadly, Hilary, a niece, was tasked with taking the picture since she is the only one in the clan/brood with half a lick of sense as far as technology goes - thus rendering the photographic depiction more unsettling than would have indeed been the case were she included!) How much is one town expected to take? What previous sins are we paying for now?" she bellowed with genuine guilt and vexation. "Oh, how can this country be expected to survive with those people spread out across this great land, sowing discord and confusion wherever they go? Who would have guessed that this was not a local but a national dilemma?" she moaned resignedly."Oh, that is all we need - more of 'them people'!" said Festus Festoon, 63, a local farmer/rancher. "I mean, this is a big world and all so one has to expect a certain variety of people to pop up from time to time, but we always just assumed that we were singled out for 'special consideration' when the whole dern Town was too lazy and apathetic to apply for the open Mayor position and that interloper came trotting in with all of his big city ways and his fancy airs and all of that! Oh, I know we deserve to be punished for our past transgressions and all - but somehow it was more comforting to think that this was just a local scourge and not an affliction with national and potentially international implications!" he stammered. "I mean, ain't one of them enough? And what are the chances of more than one of them successfully making it out of the cradle alive, anyway? (well, that is indeed a statistical improbability, come to think of it! Maybe he has a point!) Somehow the whole thing is more than a little disconcerting, for crying out loud! And to top it all off, between the whole dern mess of 'em they don't even own a single cow! That's just unnatural, if you ask me!" said the broken, dispirited man. "I guess I have no choice but to barricade myself in my house, batten down the hatches and just drink myself into insensibility" he said gravely, falling back on the one tried and true 'coping mechanism' that he successfully employs for just about any situation that life throws his way.
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