Piece on Earth, Good Will Toward . . .

At the time, going to the wedding seemed like a good idea—the woodchuck had needed some cheering up. She should have been deep into hibernation by now, but lately the state of the forest had made her anxious and depressed and she found herself wide awake and staring into the darkness of mid-December.

When the huge gold leaf had swirled into her burrow, she’d been impressed. The calligraphy scratched across the surface announced the marriage of her cousins Chip and Dale—to each other. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this. It was common knowledge that all her cousins mated with each other because really, how were you supposed to know if they were related to you or not? But actually getting married felt a little extreme. This must have been Chip’s idea—he had always pushed the envelope a bit more than the others.

An overheard conversation where a park ranger had mentioned traveling to her destination and a spur of the moment decision had led to her now being trapped in a leather satchel in an overhead bin. An announcement about landing jarred her awake, and she began chewing her way out of the carry-on, wondering why it smelled like cows and hoping it wasn’t anyone she knew.

Escaping the bag had been easy, but now she was locked in the compartment. There was a small space in the back, and she barely squeezed her furry butt through the hole. This extra hibernation weight was going to be a bitch to get off in the spring. The woodchuck poked her head out of the last bin and came face to snout with a human wearing a red scarf tied jauntily around her neck. A shriek filled the plane; and while the woodchuck wasn’t familiar with the finer points of flying, even she knew that this much noise from the flight attendant —now trying to stand on a drink cart—was going to send the rest of the seated passengers into a frenzy. She leaped to the floor and ran full speed up the aisle, the shouts of “Rat! Rat! It’s a rat!” taunting her. A panicked stew hit the emergency exit and a long yellow slide suddenly inflated in front of her. Not being a fan of playground equipment, she added her own screams to the chaos as she slid down backwards on her belly, her sharp toenails carving ragged slits in the rubber tube. By the time she reached the bottom, the limp yellow plastic was waving in the wind as she scampered away across the tarmac, gasping and shaking. She’d always been a nervous flyer.

The woodchuck found a nearby burrow and plunged into the darkness. She paused to compose herself, and as she took deep breaths, she thought about how the plane people had reacted when they assumed she was a rat. It was a ridiculous mistake—she didn’t even have a tail!—but their terror had been palpable. It had felt powerful to command such fear. At home when humans saw her on the golf course near her meadow, they usually started singing that dumb Kenny Loggins song. God, she hated Caddyshack.

The tunnel she was in lit up with headlights coming from both directions and a cacophony of enraged honking. This was not like the burrows she was used to. She serpentined between the metal beasts trying to avoid their wheels but the lights were so terrifying that she froze. She watched helplessly as Death by SUV approached, when suddenly hundreds of tiny paws reached up through a metal grate behind her and pushed it aside. They grabbed chunks of the fur on her haunches and pulled her through the hole into a freefall, where she landed in freezing water that had more than just a whiff of a sewage to it. As she tried to shake the sludge from her ears, she became aware of thousands of yellow eyes staring up at her. Terrified, she turned to flee, when all the watching rats began bowing and stroking her fur. 

“Oh, wondrous giant being, you have dropped from the dreaded Tunnel of Abe to lead our people in your ways of survival and lunch. We salute your girth and beg you to teach us how to become as large and powerful as you are.”

The woodchuck was annoyed at the crack about her weight—it was hibernation, damn it!—but if thousands were offering to worship her, who was she to argue?

“Um, teeming crowds of rodents who smell of typhoid and filth, you have earned my undying gratitude! I am only in your fair sewer for a short time, so you must choose a leader who knows the path of these tunnels and can lead your millions to less smelly living quarters.” 

The rats seemed moved by her modest suggestion that there were others more qualified to lead than she, so she added, “I seek a great tree, hundreds of feet in the sky and surrounded by a ring of ice, to attend the wedding of my cousin.”

Moving in unison as if they were a swirling swarm of garbage, the mischief of rats began to lead her through the subway system. They paused for a moment to consult Google maps, and then scampered up the steps at 47^th Street. The woodchuck was once again amazed by the humans who ran screaming in all directions as the horde burst out of the subway opening. They came upon an open plaza and then abruptly stopped, their millions of amber eyes wide with awe. A magnificent tree soared into the clouds and was lit up and sparkling against the darkening sky. How her cousin had been able to pull this off was beyond her ken, but Chip sure knew how to throw a party.

“Here is your destination, O Great Woodchuck! And to prove our admiration for your style and substance, we got you a date!”

The swarm parted to make a path, and each rodent watched in admiration as a muscular rat dragging an enormous slice of pizza approached the woodchuck. He winked at her and nodded at the piece of pie; she blushed and then grabbed the other side. The two of them headed toward the ceremony, each of them wondering what the night might bring, as it began to softly snow. It was, after all, Christmas in New York.

Christine Broquet loves it when all the rats of New York and Chicago can come together to wish each other a happy holiday and a wonderful start to a new year!
God bless them, every one—or rather, six million.