When I opened the door to Tina’s room, I found a teeny booty sticking up in the air, the teeny attached to that booty was on all fours, flinging stuffed animal after stuffed animal out of her way, searching for something on the floor.

“Uuuh, Tina? What are you doing?”

Other than making a great big frick’n mess out of your room.

Tina popped up right, swinging her head over her shoulder to scowl at me. Her cheeks were all rosy and puffed up with frustration, her cute blue eyes were all squinty with determination, her little mouth pulled into a frown like an angry chipmunk.

“I saw an elf, and now he’s hiding from me!”

I quirked up one eyebrow.

“An elf?”

Tina nodded vigorously.

“An elf. I gotta catch’em before he steals all my Starmas presents.”

I scratched my head as I watched Tina tear apart more of her room.

“Uh, Tina, you do know there’s no such thing as fey anymore, right? Their all uuuuh . . .”

Hmm, what’s the little kid appropriate term for, ‘humans hunted their asses into extinction’?

“They all flew away to heaven, and aren’t here anymore.”

Tina was shaking her cute little head, still scowling, and throwing arm loads of plushies onto her bed from the mountain heaped on the floor.

“No, I saw him and his beady little eyes. He’s going to steal the presents that Santa brought me!”

Yeah, Tina’s totally not going to stop making a mess until we found this “Elf” or gave her a good reason to believe that it’s gone.

“Okay, hold up. Let me go grab a flashlight and I’ll help you find the little bugger.”

Twelve minutes later I was down on my hands and knees too, a flashlight clamped in my teeth, surveying a corner of the room and then stuffing the fluff animals that had been there back into place.

“We’ve checked under the bed, and under the clothes rack, and in all the corners and nooks and crannies. Tina, I don’t think he’s in here. The elf probably just went home.”

Teeny plopped her hands on her hips, narrowing her eyes and scanning the room again.

“Maybe he got out the door and is going after the tree.”

Made sense, that’s where all the presents were.

I sighed and grumbled. Tina pouted and stamped her little feeties.

“No, we have to keep looking! My Starmas presents are in danger.”

I rolled my eyes and clamped the flashlight back into my teeth.

“Ho hay, ho hay.” (Okay, okay.)

On hands and knees we scuttled out of the bedroom and into the living room. Our first stop was to do a quick patrol of the tree to make sure all the gifts were secure. Tina carefully counting her presents again to make sure none of them had gone missing.

Angie’s voice from way up above sounded confused.

“Uh, what are you two doing on the floor?”

Tina popped back up to her feet and informed Angie of our very important mission.

“We’re hunting elfs. One snuck in to steal my presents, and we’re gonna find’em.”

The spot between Angie’s brows crumpled in confusion.

“Uuuh, you two do know there’s no such thing as elves anymore, right? They all got whacked by hunters.”

Dude! Angie, you’re not supposed to say that to little kids! We all know that’s what really happened, but you don’t say that kind of shit to a little kid just before Winter Starmas. They’ll grow up to be all warped and depressed like me.

Thankfully Angie’s adult logic got deflected by Teeny’s much more powerful kindergartner logic and Tina shook her head at Angie sadly, ‘cause Angie clearly didn’t understand the facts.

“No, I saw him. The elf’s here to steal my presents.”

Angie quirked one eyebrow up.

“Why would an elf want to steal your presents?”

Tina huffed, as if she had to explain everything to the poor ignorant Angie.

“To take them back to Santa, so I won’t have any.”

Angie crossed her arms over her bouncy chest.

“Uh huh, and why would Santa think that he should take your presents back . . . Unless you did something bad.”

Tina jumped a little and started looking around the room nervously.

“What? No. I didn’t do anything bad. Gigi was just making up stories. I didn’t do anything.”

Hmmm. Gigi was the other pretty girl at Tina’s daycare and Teeny’s arch nemesis. I mean, as much as a kindergartner can have an arch nemesis.

And yeah, I get why Teeny doesn’t like her. I’ve met Gigi and she’s kind of a spoiled little brat. She isn’t sweet like my Teeny Sissy.

Totally casually changing the subject, Tina got back on target.

“We have to find that elf! I know he’s somewhere in here.”

Angie narrowed her eyes at Tina and a corner of her mouth curled up into a half smile.

“Uh huh.”

And then a super brilliant idea popped into my head.

“You know, oh Angie our super cop lady, I bet you could find that sneaky little elf.”

Angie got all scowly with me.

“And why the hell should I help you find this supposed ‘elf’?”

I pointed at Tina, who was currently ripping the cushions off the couch and chucking them onto the floor.

“Depends, how long do you want to watch her doing shit like that?”

Angie clapped her hands together.

“Right, so let’s find that elf!”

We were all on our hands and knees inspecting the entryway dumping area where everyone abandoned their bags, boots, and coats in a huge heap near the door. Tina was peering in an empty cubby shelf that everyone was supposed to put their shoes in to keep the area tidy, that no one actually used.

Angie huffed, pawing through the mountain of bags.

“Well, an elf isn’t going to fit in there. Come on help me over here.”

Tina shook her head again.

“No, it was little.”

My eyebrows scrunched in thought.

“How little?”

Tina reached her hand into one of the cubbies and only pulled out dust bunnies, her voice dead serious.

“Real little.”

She held her hands up with a gap between that would barely fit a soda can.

Damn, that is really little.

And that’s when Noah came scurrying through the door, and nearly trampled us to death.

“Oh sorry. What is everyone doing at the front door? Are you going somewhere?”

Tina shook her head and informed Noah in a grave voice.

“We’re hunting elfs, there’s one going after my presents.”

Noah flashed his shocked bunny eyes at the hunting party.

“An elf?! Really? What does it look like?”

We all took a moment to stare at the elf boy.

Tina, gave Noah the details of the little invader with a voice toned for scary stories.

“It’s all dark with beady little eyes.”

Tina squinted her eyes to show just how evil and beady the eyes were.

“And clawed little hands.”

Tina hooked her fingers into teeny little monster claws to show how scaring the hands were.

“And a sparkly, sparkly bow on it’s head.”

Tina poked one clawed finger at her noggin to show where the villainous crown hung.

“And it’s looking for presents!”

With the last word, Tina pounced in Noah’s direction her clawed fingies swiping at the entranced audience.

Noah’s eyes were wide, and he was nodding like a true believer.

“Yeah, that sounds like one of Santa’s elves, alright. We better find him before he does any damage to the gifts.”

Yeeeeeeah ‘cause Santa’s elves were so totally known for ruining Winter Starmas.

Noah flopped down onto his hands and knees next to Tina and they went scurrying off to find some more hidey holes that the tiny devil might be lurking in.

Angie rolled her eyes and turned to follow them.

She was probably thinking the same thing I was thinking, how the hell were we supposed to get Tina to believe that the nonexistent elf had left if Noah kept feeding into her weird little fantasy?

I huffed out a sigh and was just about to follow them when I tiny bit of movement caught the corner of my eye.

I could have sworn I had seen something, just under the Starmas tree.

Wondering closer the the bedazzled greenery and heaps of bow clad boxes underneath, I saw the movement again.

(Rustle, rustle)

I knelt down and picked up a particularly wiggly package.

Under the gift there stood a teeny little figure dark in color, with beady black eyes and teeny tiny little pink hannies. It also had a fluffy gray belly, a wiggly pick nosy, and glossy black whiskers the twitched as the little guy bounced on his hind legs and squeaked a greeting to me.

It was one of my adorable legion of zombie rats. And it did indeed have a sparkly red bow stuck to its head.

It must have been crawling around in the gifts and gotten one of the stick on bows stuck in its fur.

How could Tina have ever mistaken an absolutely adorable zombie sewer rat for a nefarious Santa elf was beyond me.

Just look at those cute widdle hannies!

That’s when I noticed that there was a little something clutched in those little hands.

The rat bounced and squeaked at me again. It gave the thing in its paws a little nibble then looked up at me again.

Oh, did it want me to take that?

I reached out my palm to it, lowing my hand nearly on the floor in front of the rat so it could place the tiny treasure on my fingers.

Lifting the gift up, I realized it was an old Starmas light bulb with some of the wires still sticking out the end.

Why was it giving me this?

Did rats understand the idea of Starmas presents? Or did my rats just see that my family seemed to be gathering things in one area. Did they think we were stock piling supplies for winter?

Whatever the reason, seeing the gleaming glass of the Starmas light gifted to me by my tiny little helper, had my little coal heart melting.

I smiled and whispered down to my sweet little minion.

“Thank you. And Merry Winter Starmas.”

I gently pulled the stuck bow out of its fur, and gave its head a little pat.

The rat squeaked and bounced one last time then scurried off to a tiny hole next to the front door.

Hmm, we should probably patch that up.

Curling the stray wires of the bulb into a loop and sticking the bow onto the rounded glass, I climbed to my feet and started looking for my confused little sister.

I found the search party in the kitchen, explaining to Jiro the dire situation the whole apartment was in.

Angie looked over her shoulder and snapped at me.

“Where the hell have you been?”

I shrugged back.

“Talking to the elf.”

Angie’s eyes got big.

“What? Really?”

I nodded then knelt down in front of Tina.

“I had a little chat with the elf, and he was never here to steal your presents. He wanted to give you this.”

I held up the tiny Starmas light that now looked a bit like a tree ornament.

Tina’s eyes got huge with surprise.

“He wanted to give me this?”

She took the delicate treasure reverently.

I nodded.

“Yup, he traveled all the way from the North Pole just to drop it off for you, and to wish a very merry Winter Starmas for a very special little girl.”

Tina’s mouth popped open into a perfect little “O” in shock.

Very very carefully she tread over to the tree and hung the ornament on an already over decorated bough.

She took a long moment to admire her very special gift from a sneaky little elf that ran her around an a wild goose chase.

Then she wiped her hands off on her shirt.

“It’s kind of grubby.”

Yeah, it kind of was. Probably got dug out of some dumpster.

“We should probably wash our hands.”