Large animals with fur harbor fleas, that's axiomatic.  Fleas were only the beginning of David Earth's "welcome guests," as he'd once described them to me.  I'd countered with another term, parasites, and he'd merely smiled benevolently.  All his smiles were benevolent; he was that kind of guy, the sort whose kindly face you'd like to rip off and feed to his welcome guests.  David was the kind of guy who had all the moral answers, and never hesitated to point out the error of your ways.  Lovingly, of course.  He loved all nature's creatures, did David, even one as low on the evolutionary ladder as youself.

What sort of guests did David spread his filthy welcome mat for?  Well, what sort of vermin live in grasslands?  I'd never seen a prairie dog peeking from his coiffure, but I wouldn't have been surprised.  He was home to a scamper of mice, a shriek of shrews, a twittering of finches, and a circus of fleas.  A trained biologist could easily have counted a dozen species of insects without even getting close.  All these creatures were born, reared, courted, mated, nested, ate, defecated, urinated, laid their eggs, fought their battles, stalked their prey, dreamed their dreams and, as must we all, eventually died in the various biomes that were David.  Sometimes the carcasses fell out; sometimes they didn't.  All more fertile soil for the next generation.

All Earthists stink; it goes with the territory.  They are perennial defendants in civil court for violation of the body odor laws, hauled in when some long-suffering citizen on a crowded elevator finally decides he's had enough.  David Earth was the only man I knew of in Luna who was permanently banished from the public corridors.  He made his way from ranch to disneyland to hydroponic farm by way of the air, water, and service ducts.

"My membership is alarmed if that is your best offer," said David's companion, a much smaller, much less prepossessing fellow whose only animal attributes I could see were a modest pair of pronghorn antlers and a lion's tail.  "One hundred murders is nothing but wanton slaughter, and we totally reject it.  But after careful consultation, we're prepared to offer eighty.  With the greatest reluctance."

"Eighty harvested," Callie leaned on the word, as she always did.  "Eighty is simply ridiculous.  I'll go broke with a quota of eighty.  Come on, let's go up to my office right now, I'll show you the books, there's an order of seventy carcasses from McDonald's alone."

"That's your problem; you should never have signed the contract until these negotiations were concluded."

"Don't sign the contract, I lose the customer.  What do you want to do, ruin me?  Ninety-nine, that's my absolutely no-fooling final offer; take it or leave it.  I don't think I can turn a profit even with a hundred, it'll be touch and go.  But to get this over with . . . I'll tell you what.  Ninety-eight.  That's twelve less than what you gave Reilly, just down the road, not three days ago, and his herd's smaller than mine."