The Maple Street Homeowners Association named local reporter Barnaby Fleece its new Senior Favor Reconciliation Coordinator, yanking him off the Favor Fire story that had exposed 47 shaky chicken-for-goat swaps. The promotion arrived the same morning those swaps threatened to ripple across twelve blocks.
Fleece’s draft on the vanished chicken was locked in the HOA vault as too delicate for daylight. Chairperson Margaret Billow declared the move necessary to keep the bartering grid from fracturing, though the announcement skipped any mention of the buried report.
Neighbors, including the owners of the returned bird, greeted the news with narrowed eyes; the promotion and the official containment notice landed on the same bulletin. Harold Tiller, still holding a borrowed goat, muttered that a few fowl entries hardly justified freezing the whole ledger.
The HOA now urges everyone to audit their own books and warns that a second watchdog may be posted if enough oats can be scraped together to pay for it.
