Dear Slappy, Whitey, and even Skinny (though you aren't quite old enough yet to know how to read),

We've been friends for a little over three years now. We've established a bond, and with that bond, a trust: I respect you and your property, and you respect me and mine. Unfortunately, your new friend-- whom I've nicknamed “Kenneth Lay”, after one of our nation's greatest criminals (you'll see why in a minute)-- knows not of this mutual bond.

Case in point: I was returning home this past Saturday, after a small shopping expedition where I dropped more bank than Jay-Z at a Hennessy Factory Outlet

(I bought eyeglasses, which will not get you drunk). Just as I turned the key in my door and started setting foot into my filth-hole of a kitchen, I heard a creature a-stirring. But no, my concerned Neighborhood Watchers, it was no mouse. And, quashing my initial fear, thankfully, it was not human, neither.

The perpetrator? Kenneth Lay, your new, and apparently criminally-inclined, squirrel buddy. He chewed his way through my window screen, and slithered his slimy self through the two inches the window was actually open. I must have scared the peepers out of him, though, because as soon as I opened the door, he bolted faster than David Duke at a Wu Tang concert.

So I come to you, old friends: Slappy; Whitey; Little Skinny. Talk to your five-finger-discount-favoring buddy. Remind him of our friendship, and of our bond, or I will capture and sell the lot of you to the Chinese restaurant next to the grocery store.

Your distraught compadre,

Vinnie