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Archive for December 27th, 2007

Reindeer Games

Thursday, December 27th, 2007

It’s Wednesday, prostate and I’ve decided to update on Wednesdays from now on, site whether I want to or not.

And since it is the also the day after Christmas, and I have no other ideas running around in my head, I’m going to relate the story that I have taken to calling “Worst Christmas Ever”.

For a while I worked with a soldier, who I will refer to as PFC Kringle.  He was always a little “off” (And yes I realize that means something different when I say it.)  Shortly before the holidays one year he told me the following story from his childhood.

His step-father was a ranger. The kind that works in a national park.  Not the kind that stormed the beaches of Normandy.  One of the tasks his step-father had to take care of was road kill.

Well one morning, a few days before Christmas Eve, when PFC Kringle was a little boy, his step-father came across a small deer that had been run over by a car.  Instead of doing, well, whatever the heck it is that park rangers normally do with a dead deer, he came up with a clever idea.

(Side note: What the heck do they do with dead deer? Is there a road kill graveyard somewhere?  Do they use the meat to feed the homeless or something?  Perhaps there is a special deer furnace for burning them?  The furnace seems the most likely, but it does seem like a bizarre and somewhat creepy career choice.)

So he brought the deer home, and made an improvised harness for it out of some leather straps.

Then he spent all Christmas Eve yelling about how much he hated Santa Claus.  “That red-suited bastard had better not show his face around here this year!  If he does, I’ll kill him and all those darn reindeer.”

Eventually PFC Kringle and his little brother were sent to bed.  And that’s when daddy-dearest hauled the deer up onto the roof, and attached one end of his new dead deer harness to the chimney.  He then pushed the deer off of the roof.  There was now a dead deer in a harness, swinging past his children’s window.

Next he went down to the yard, and fired a shotgun into the ground several times, while yelling, “I got him! I got him!”

The kids, of course, open the curtains just in time to see Rudolf go sailing past.

So at this point the unit decided that a little off or not he was remarkably well-adjusted, all things considered.