"Doris McNugget"

It was the 3rd of December, 1973 and Doris Dunbar was already having the worst weekend of her life. Her 22nd cousin Maureen had dragged her to Las Vegas for a so-called “girls trip," which, so far, had consisted mostly of Maureen making bad decisions. Doris didn’t even like Vegas. The lights were too bright and the drinks were too expensive.

And then she met Morris. Morris was a well-dressed piece of poultry and he happened to be obscenely rich. He sat at the high-stakes poker table like he owned the place, a massive bag of grain at his side, which he tossed into the air with effortless confidence.

Every time he did, respectable roosters and barnyard fool alike, lost their minds, diving, scrambling, clawing at the floor in a frenzy. Some bird in a cheap suit had already been escorted out for getting too aggressive and crapping in the coin slot of a pokey machine. Doris was enchanted.

Here was a chicken who knew how to command a room. Who had swagger. Who could make full-grown, feathered gentlehens lose their dignity over a handful of cracked corn.
She had never been one for romance, but Morris was different.

Or so she thought.
Every day since has been worse than the last.

Morris, it turned out, was not obscenely rich.
Morris was not even comfortably well-off.
Morris was a Costco rotisserie chicken. Bought in bulk. Mass-produced. Absolutely not high society.

Doris had fallen for it.
Now she wakes up every morning to a chicken who smells faintly of cheap garlic salt and disappointment.
He grumbles at pigeons on the lawn saying ‘what’s wrong with the world today’, shoos them away, then immediately checks if they left any crumbs behind.

Her life could have been anything, but she had to go and fall for the showy, smooth-talking fraud with good feathers and a bag of grain.

Every day since December 3rd, 1973 has been a mistake.