- Jonas has been forced into mandatory retirement. He can't relax, though, because Anita's friends are driving him crazy.
- After forty-seven years of work as general sales manager, Jonas is forced into a mandatory retirement. Along these years, his lonely wife Anita has collected many pets and Jonas is unable to relax with the animals at home. When he decides to have taxidermy as a hobby, Anita helps him to complete the collection.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- The Crypt Keeper (John Kassir) is going to read about the golden years of an elderly couple.
Anita (Audra Lindley) leaves the kitchen telling its occupants that her husband is about to arrive, and then they will enjoy the party. There's some noise outside and she goes to greet her husband, but it's actually a red-haired cat who broke a flower pot. Anita picks it up and takes it inside. The doorbell rings and grumpy Jonas (M. Emmet Walsh) appears, complaining that she's just closed the door in his face. Anita says she didn't see him, and helps him to unload the huge box of office appliances he's brought home. Jonas has just retired, and the only thing he got after more than forty years working in a hardware store was a lousy golden hammer. Anita tries to appease him and start the party, but Jonas doesn't feel the slightest like it. After Jonas goes to bed in a terrible mood, Anita goes to the kitchen to disappoint her "children": a collection of home animals in party gear who feel really sad because the party is not going to take place in the end.
The next morning Jonas and Anita wake up at about the same time as always. She tells him that he may keep on sleeping, but that she needs to do household chores. Jonas can't sleep again, so he gets up from bed. Now, they have to share the bathroom space, and each one is onto the other's toes, and he has to specifically ask her to leave the bathroom so that he can take a shit. During breakfast, he is angry at Anita as she gives a dog the steak while he only gets some oat cereals. Then, longtime friend Roy (Martin Garner) visits Jonas, and he tells him that Jonas will need time to get used to his new routines, and also advises that Jonas take a new hobby, for example building models. Jonas decides to start pruning the garden bushes, which means that he mercilessly kills one of them.
That night, all TV programmes have to do with animals. Jonas tries to zap, but it's useless. He gets a headache and wants an aspirin. Instead of that, Anita brings him a brownie. Jonas grumps, implying that Anita is stupid, but he finally eats it. When he has swallowed it, he realizes that the aspirin was inside. He's furious because that is something that you would do to an animal to take his medicine. The following days, Jonas keeps on pruning/destroying the garden. One day, for lunch, he gets a tuna sandwich, the tuna being from a cat food can, and making him spit it out; another day a cat spills his lemonade; he gets furious every time he realizes that Anita treats the animals like children. Roy tries to appease him, saying that it's understandable, and that Anita must have felt lonely throughout all those years when he was working long hours, and having no children of their own to take care of. When he realizes that he will have to spend together their "golden years" with her animals, he panics, and feels even more hatred about the situation. He starts spending more time in the basement, though, as Roy has given him some toy boxes so that he can start modeling.
One day, Anita can't find one of her dogs. Then, it's one of her cats. Jonas shouts that he's seen his namesake Jonas - a sad bulldog - in the garden. Anita goes outside and is terrified when Jonas's eyes glow in the night. It's a taxidermied version of Jonas the dog. Anita panics and asks Jonas about it, and he says that he's taken on a new hobby: taxidermy.
Anita looks for her other animals, and she finds them in the basement: they are all dead there, except for the red-haired cat. Jonas is going to work on it immediately. Anita takes the golden hammer in desperation and hits Jonas with it.
The next day, Anita and Jonas are watching Lassie on TV. Roy calls on them, and Anita tells him to step inside. Roy realizes that Jonas is dead. The person sitting on the couch is the taxidermied body of Jonas.
Roy screams.
Back to the Crypt Keeper: he's taken on taxidermy as well, and he shows a black dog to prove it.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content