by Tim Griggs

Created on: November 17, 2008   Last Updated: November 18, 2008

As we're now expected to bail out every politician buying corporation in the world, we don't want money that could pay a CEO's zillion dollar bonus wasted on groceries for our children, so we began a new holiday tradition featuring our ubiquitous and nutritious friend, the squirrel.

We made the slaughter of our Christmas squirrel a family project. I built a squirrel house and let the kids paint and decorate it. Once the squirrel settled in, we had a democrat set the thing on fire while a republican stood by with his limp water hose refusing to put it out. Then we seized all the squirrel's nuts and gave them to friends of Hank Paulson.

Our assumption was the squirrel would give himself up at this point, but hunger had made us wishful thinkers. It was time to get medieval on his bushy tail. We issued him a credit card, and lent his nuts back to him at a high rate of interest. Once he realized his minimum monthly payment would never reduce his balance, surely he'd leap to his death. It never happened.

Then, in an ill-conceived plot to break the squirrel's heart, we dressed up Junior's Malibu Brandi to look like a female squirrel and hummed a few bars of, Frankie & Johnnie were sweethearts. But, the squirrel promised to call Brandi the following day and never did. He was good.

I was humiliated. He must have seen us through the window. I don't know how he got in, but there he was, holding a pecan, on our kitchen table, standing next to our last can of beans. He sighed, set down his pecan and lay in Grandma's microwave safe gravy boat. He looked up at us with those black eyes and squeaked, "Eat me."

My first thought was, do we have soy sauce? Then we all started to cry. What had we become? Had we let hardship drive us to act like the very people who hurt us? Had we let fear lead us to persecute an innocent creature? Does Junior really play with dolls?

We made that squirrel our official family Christmas pet. He brought us an abundance of every kind of nut, and we shared with him our last can of holiday beans.

If your house is full of love, it doesn't matter that you were dumb enough to sign an adjustable rate mortgage to get it. The Great Tax Payer in the sky bails us all out in the end. No weasel corporation or the flunky politician in their pocket can give or take what really matters. Unless what really matters is $850 billion.

So let us leave those masters of the universe with a Christmas wish: May you too, in your many mansions here on Earth, be blessed on the holiest of nights by a visitation from a flatulent rodent."

Merry Christmas

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