Probe Holiday Alert: Dangers Lurk in Malls
The Daily Probe - December 7, 2000
The context for this and other Daily Probe articles is provided here.
EVERYWHERE, USA (DPI) - Santa, elves, talking snowmen: these are
the mythical characters of Christmas that make us laugh and share
merriment with all and sundry. But lurking beneath the veneer of
fantasy is a horrid host of horticultural hobgoblins that besmirch
the season.
The most prevalent is TreeWoman, who appears in the form of a short,
elderly woman holding twenty large shopping bags, her winter coat
buttoned to the neck. She appears simultaneously in every aisle of
every store in America starting the day after Thanksgiving, jamming
the passageway until January 12 of the following year. Rooted in
one spot, she forces all of humanity to squeeze past her with great
difficulty.
TreeWoman's mobile cousin is HedgeHog, which appears in the guise
of a large family, all in a single row, with foliage that looks
like sweatsuits. HedgeHog traditionally moves slowly up and down
the walkways at the mall, asking no quarter and granting none in its
heartless game of chicken with oncoming pedestrians. The impatient
crowds trapped behind HedgeHog resemble, in both number and in
desperation, the hordes who gathered to leave Egypt behind Moses
in "The Ten Commandments."
God save us all from these spawn of Beelzebub's Arboreum.
- Reported by Chris Jones
-30-