Santa needs a GPS

Apparently, Santa's been hitting the eggnog.


The other day, he decided to make a quick stop in St. Michaels, MD, to pick up some last-minute toys.  The elves at the North Pole were all calling in sick (also from too much eggnog) and Santa was desperate.  He loaded a few things for early delivery, climbed aboard, and called for the reindeer.


But the reindeer weren't cooperating, either.  They'd all eaten way too much Christmas fudge and with bellies that full and a sugar high quickly becoming a sugar crash, they refused to fly high above the radar.  "Oh heck to the no", Rudolph muttered.  "Just make sure your hooves don't hit any trees and we're all good." 


Um.  Not quite.

Eggnog has a bad habit of making Santa not only sleepy but dizzy, and he'd left his GPS in his other sleigh.  (Yes, there's another sleigh, the much larger semi-truck-sized sleigh for the 24th.)  Unfortunately for him, he was coming in WAY too low into a field in St. Michaels when a jet plane had the same idea.  The field was a perfect landing spot for a sleigh, but the jet had to make a bit of a crash landing when Rudolph's nose failed to glow so bright and all of a sudden Mr. Air Force Pilot was faced with an early Christmas -- or perhaps, the postponement of the REAL one.

Panda-freaking-monium.  The pitot tube of the jet pierced the sleigh, hurting no one but tossing everything up in the air.  While some of the toys made it back into the sleigh, quite a few didn't.  Santa had to coax Rudolph out of the stalled engine, where he'd tried to hide himself for fear of Santa's jolly old self flipping out and starting to think of venison stew.

Fortunately one of Santa's elves had called shotgun and was less rattled than the rest of the crew, and he started rescuing some of the toys.

The pilot, unharmed but shaken, sat on a present and thought about how he was going to explain THIS one to the General.  If the General didn't believe in Santa, he sure as heck would now!

As you can see, packages weren't the only thing scattered all over the place.  The rest of the reindeer were hanging out behind the shattered fence, which had broken during the crash landing.  None of the other reindeer wanted to play any reindeer games, and they also didn't want to get whatever was coming to Rudolph.

In the end, as all good Christmas stories do, everything turned out perfectly fine.  Rudolph jumped out of the turbine when Santa promised to behave.  The elf picked up and packed up all the scattered toys (although he fully planned on contacting his union rep AND filing for Workman's Comp).  The pilot helped Santa pull the sleigh off the pitot tube and they discovered it was perfectly flyable, but everyone decided to head into town for a nice dinner before attempting any more flying.

Remember this post, about Memorial Day?

Well, this same gentleman created this tableau.

I about wrecked my car laughing when I first passed it.

I hope you enjoyed this cautionary tale:

1) Always carry your GPS.

2)  Don't drink eggnog and drive.

3) Don't let the reindeer eat an hour before flying.

4) Be careful who calls shotgun.

Lori Anderson creates jewelry for her web site, Lori Anderson Designs, and wrote the blog An Artist's Year Off.  She is the creator of the Bead Soup Blog Party.