Cougars on Christmas

I won't say that nothing is more fun than Christmas Eve, but I must say that there is nothing more interesting. This year, to top off the ridiculousness of my family, Shea has been added to the mix.

The party always starts when my grandmother walks in. To her surprise, she was greeted by a barking 75-pound dog. One extreme meets the other. Grandma is a talker. She talks about anything and everything you can imagine, but mostly things you would never expect to hear out of an 89 year old's mouth. Anything is up for conversation, from reincarnation to vampires to sex. Shea is not a talker. He is more of a scavenger looking for a free meal. Some (my grandmother) may call him an animal!

He was on his best behavior, but he clearly sensed weakness in my grandmother. He knew if he was to get some of the delicious Christmas Eve dinner, he would have to sneak up on her side. He could tell her reflexes were slower than the average person. When he got tired of being good, he made his move. He sprang up onto the table, grabbed a slab of turkey, and wolfed it down.

This threw Grandma into a frenzy, amazed by Shea's pure animalness. One can never trust an animal. As conversations can turn in a moment with Grandma, this immediately took a turn for the worse. Not only are dogs animals you can't trust, but so are coyotes, wolves, and bears. She warned my cousin, who lives in Los Angeles, to stay away from the coyotes. Lord knows they are roaming around Rodeo Drive mingling with Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.

As Grandma is getting opinions on which animals are worse: lions, tigers, or bears, my mother suddenly became a comedian. I'm not sure if it was the extra glass of wine in her or if she has hidden her sarcasm for all 26 years of my life, but my mother's response was, "the cougars!"

Of course, the population under 80 all found the extreme humor in this. The remainder of the crowd, Grandma, believed that in fact cougars were the most dangerous animal out there. So the warnings to watch out for cougars started flowing. As one may imagine, my grandmother does not know much about cougars so she had many questions. Where do they live? What attracts them? This led to more inappropriate comments than an episode of The Family Guy.

Anyways, I am going to enjoy the rest of the show and maybe play some Wii. Merry Christmas to my millions upon millions of readers out there!