December 1 . . .
“I quit.”
The words were printed on a brown paper bag. The letters were crude, scratched from what appeared to be the mud from just outside the barn. A tiny, debossed stamp of a deer’s hoof served as the signature. The bag sat on the Claus’s kitchen table, surrounded by two-dozen salt lick angel cookies and a wilting bouquet of mistletoe. It was the day after the day after Christmas, 2017.
December 2 . . .
Hay Day
Nobody knows the exact second on the atomic clock when Rudy weakened. Or what form that final straw took.
Theories flooded in from the usual subterranean provinces as well as the ethereal. One farmer reported that it was not one, but thousands of organic missiles snatched up from wheat fields that hadn’t been bailed.
The winds of that tornado would hold the title of ‘storm of the century’ for ten days, until a bigger one scraped across the earth.
There was no last straw. Rudy’s noble soul was pierced by a byproduct of cereal.
He was hit by the hay.
December 3 . . .
Ancestry Matters
Rudy comes from a long line of loyal and true steeds, a fact first noted by none other than Charles Darwin, who made a clandestine journey to Lapland in the winter of 1835. Following his Indian summer voyage of discovery to the Galapagos, there was such a brew-ha-ha about the idea that the sweet red-breasted robin’s Jurassic ancestor could have been a Velociraptor, that Chuck hesitated to tell anyone what he was up to at the tippy top of the planet.
His intention was to test his aerodynamic mammal theory as it applied to the Norse and Germanic mythology. He hid copious notes in the flyleaf of his red-leather journal, which he placed in a secret drawer of his roll top desk. His wife [and first cousin] Emma donated the desk to a museum and nobody opened the drawer until 2016.
Now we know that Darwin had surmised that Rudy’s ancestors were massive, horned beasts that pulled Thor, the mighty god of Thunder across the sky in a chariot on freezing winter nights. This suited Santa, who acknowledged a fondness for the thunder god’s bellowing “Ho Ho Ho”. However, amateur Norwegian rune translators had mistakenly dubbed the beasts ‘goats’ not reindeer – a tragic example of semantic disaster. Darwin tried to correct the mistake, but he didn’t have access to DNA analysis.
Rudy did. He sent his sample to Ancestry.com. Soon after he received the results, left his resignation on Santa’s kitchen table.
December 4 . . .
Eavesdropping on the Master
It happened so fast. One minute he was following Dasher and Dancer down the hall, the next, he slipped on the ice that his mates had tracked in. Rudy was splayed up against the wall to the conference room. He knew it was rude to eavesdrop, but after all, Santa was the master.
“He sees you when you’re sleeping.
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows if you’ve been good or bad
So be good for goodness sake.”
J.
Fred Coots
Copyright: Toy Town Tunes Inc.
The words were muffled, but Santa’s rich baritone penetrated the oaken door. “I wouldn’t call them a ‘team’ per se,” Santa told his arbitration attorneys. “They are a preternatural entity the elves concocted for convenience. The one with the cold should learn how to blow his nose.”
When Rudy heard this, he was certain he would be cast aside as an inauthentic aberration? Would he be the first to feel be downsized? Just because he had the sniffles?
Actions have consequences. Rudy had refused to be vaccinated for Lyme disease. According to PolitiFact, this half true. There is no vaccination for the disease, or the common cold. The idea for his replacement was only an agenda item under unfinished business. It was true that someone had suggested his position be given to a drone with a solar-powered proboscis.
Hearing this, however, was enough to send his brain spinning so fast it turned his red nose, blue. Disaster averted.