Heimlich Daffodil fell in love with a bean by the name of Filomena, originally of Zacatecas, Mexico. Luckily, Filomena spoke English in addition to her native Spanish, so there weren’t any issues in terms of a language barrier for the monolingual Heimlich. But that didn’t make it all smooth sailing. In bean culture, Filomena said, it was forbidden to engage in carnal relations with a human being outside a state of wedlock.Obviously, there was only one solution.

“My sweet,” said Heimlich. “Make me the world’s happiest man named after both a maneuver and a flower and marry me.”

“Darling!” said Filomena. “Nothing would bring me more joy! Nevertheless, I can only accept your proposal on the condition that you would, in turn, be willing to have children with me. You see, having children has been a lifelong dream of mine, and as far marriage goes, it’s a definite dealbreaker. I know I should have brought this up with you earlier, but you have to concede, ours has been a bit of a whirlwind romance.”

“What I wouldn’t do to have children with you, my sweet!” cried Heimlich. “But look at us. For one thing, you’re a bean and I’m a human, and for another – well, actually I can’t really think of anything else, but the first thing pretty much presents an intractable obstacle as far as I can tell. Oh, woe is me! I’m like Romeo if Juliet was a bean instead of a Capulet!”

According to Filomena, however, all was not as lost as it seemed. While their children could never be his in a strictly genetic sense, Heimlich, she explained, could still participate in their fructification by planting her in a deep pot full of potting soil mixed with a handful of vermiculite, watering the soil daily to maintain it in a moist condition, and waiting for the little ones to reach maturity within their respective pods, at which point he could empty out the pods, adopt the bean children as his own, and extract her from the soil, thereby making of the whole lot of them a happy and healthy – if not altogether traditional – family.

“Think of it as akin to when a wealthy old impotent man finances his young wife’s in vitro fertilization with some hale youngster’s sperm,” she said.

Unfortunately, Heimlich didn’t like this idea at all. More to the point, he profoundly resented the implicit comparison between himself and an impotent old man on which it was predicated. So, without further ado, he tossed Filomena back into the bowl of microwave-heated canned beans from which he’d extracted her just minutes earlier and proceeded to gobble her up alongside all the rest, stuffed into a large flour tortilla with rice, corn, guacamole, pickled onions, and Pace Picante brand salsa.

“That’ll show the fibrous little hussy,” he said, emitting a satisfied belch.

But perhaps Confucius was on to something when he warned that he who seeks revenge should first dig two graves; for as it happened, Filomena had conveniently neglected to tell Heimlich before he ate her that she’d only recently ended a serious relationship with a bean weevil who had in the course of regular intimacies implanted one of its larva inside of her, an omission as a result of which the poor fellow was so taken by surprise a few weeks later when he farted and a beetle came flying out of his backside that he had a massive heart attack and dropped dead right on the spot.