Today is the third anniversary of my Evil Squirrel’s Nest blog…

Yes, only a total douchebag with no life like me would choose to start up a blog on the evening that Rankin Bass told us was the holiest night of the year, when everyone else is gathering with their family and putting presents in tampon boxes.  But it was on a probably not foggy Christmas Eve that I got this all started with a welcome post stating that the primary purpose of my blog was to introduce the world to this cast of furry characters I had created.  It’s probably the only thing I had in mind when I started this blog that I actually succeeded at…

As this most recent contest I ran proved time and time again… my critters are not only known to a group of people who had no idea who I was before they found my blog… but they are LOVED!  Loved enough that many of you actually got excited over the prospect of who you might get, and which one was your favorite!  This was a completely dorky thing that I did… and yet it was probably the most popular and successful event I ever had in my three years here!  It was incredibly cool to see each player’s response to the character they were destined to adopt.

To celebrate my blogaversary today, I want to provide a full recap of this wild and wacky past three weeks.  It seemed at first that my contest might fall flat due to a lack of interest, as it took five days and some helpful recruitment from Sheena to get the slots filled.  But I got my full roster of 20 participants who each agreed to receive a holiday card from me… each card stuffed with a marker drawn and colored cartoon of a different one of my characters, the identity of which was not known to either the recipient or even myself.  The players were to then post a picture of their prize on their blog upon receiving the card, and I would keep track of who went where on a master list in my header.

That list, incidentally, has received a whopping 348 hits since I added it on the day I mailed all of the cards, December 8th… which makes it already the 9th most popular post ever on my blog!  It seems you were all as interested in keeping tabs on the action as I was!

All images of my character cards featured in the rest of this post were taken by the respective blogger who got that critter…

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The first result came in after only two nights when Mental Mama reported receiving my original squirrel girl Sandy!

It was almost the perfect card to begin the ceremonies and give the other players a taste of what they would be getting.  A very cute and adorable drawing, but not one of the major characters that others would pine after.  I was also very happy to see how this card turned out as a photo… the actual colors on the cards are much darker than the flash makes them appear.

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Expecting a handful of hits the next night after the cards had been in transit for three days, I instead woke up that evening to find only one more report had come in… but it was one of my favorite cards set up in one of my favorite photos!

TC Conner had gotten Hottie, and I love the way he propped the card into the strings of his guitar!  This was probably the most colorful card I drew… even moreso than a certain donkicorn.  TC keeps Hottie at his computer with him where her eternal optimism can help inspire him in his creative endeavors.

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Late, late that night, the next report came in… and it was from the one participant in my contest who already knew most of my critters inside and out.  Fanny from my Millionaire message board decided to jump in the contest, and she got one of my older characters who she saw rise to become ES’s main female counterpart… the lovely MBRS!

The fiery redhead made a quick friend in fellow femme fatale, Miss Fantine… Fanny’s cat!

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The nest morning, longtime Nest fan Merby chimed in with Erin… who was holding a special treasure of her own!

Hey, the next best thing to actually getting the Rainbow Donkey card is getting one with a cute little RD stuffy, right?

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Now we’re rolling along!  Sheena got her card that evening… and she got Clem!

Oh my!  What horror could possibly be hiding behind the black box?

I knew whoever got my studmuffin Clem was going to have a fun time showing him off… and Sheena did not disappoint with the faux-outrage and censorship!  The comments on her post are hilarious, and you’ve got to read them!

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Very late that same evening, the prime time for vampires to be posting on their blogs, the lovely Juliette worked her character into one of her entertaining stories about her vampire family… the mysterious but adorable little Pigladillo!

Sigh, I wish I’d had a marker more his shade of green….

But anyway, check out Juliette’s post to see the other pictures that her new pet Pigladillo photobombed… including an appearance with an armadillo!

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Someone playing this game was bound to get a dead possum…. or a soon to be dead possum.  And that wound up being tishmoon, who ended the first week of the contest by cheerfully reporting that her foxling had a brand new friend in Buster!

Buster got a prized spot on the Christmas tree!  And I hear he’ll end up on the little one’s surfboard after the holidays… an honor if there ever was one!

Here’s a better view of Buster getting trampled by Rudolph:

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I was a little surprised that with 14 cards going out to addresses in the US, the 8th player to check in was my French connection Easy!  He got my little raccoon Robbie… and true to his awkward nature, he wound up in a frame that wasn’t meant for his orientation.

Actually, this might totally work out for Spidey since he’s used to hanging out on the side’s of buildings.  It also seems with the last two cards, we have a trampling death theme!

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Tuesday the 16th saw another spurt of card reports (as opposed to report cards?), and it started with Goldfish who may be the only person to ever be utterly thrilled to receive a porcupine!

Nabob being all curmudgeonly and shouting “Humbug!” was perfect for Goldy, she explained.  I’m sure it also helped that she got some truly awesome artwork from another blogger in the same batch of mail that Nabob was in… make sure to check out the post!  Nabob is a character I never us enough, and he had one of his finest roles in my most recent comic… and now thanks to a random draw of the cards, he is Goldfish’s new favorite character of mine!

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Within minutes of Goldfish’s post, Draliman brought the contest to the halfway point by posting the good news that he’s received my crusader kitty against everything from WordPress snow to holiday greetings, Odyssey!

Now that she is a part of Drali’s world, she will no doubt protest against cruel and inhuman Friday Fictioneers stories! 🙂

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Next up was everyone favorite piggy Bacon, who got my skunkette with an attitude, Hooly!

While I can’t guarantee you she’ll be worth a million catrillion dollars, she’ll certainly act like she is!  And thankfully, you didn’t have to attack the mailman too much to get her!

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If you thought Clem’s jingle balls were risque, just wait till you see the card full of lewdness that somehow snuck past the RCMP into JackieP’s possession…

That’s my wild borzoi Skanki doing a little pole dancing at 90 degrees north latitude.  You can tell by the position of the sun in that card that it must be high noon.  Jackie admitted that she was always quite interested in learning the fine art that the Skankster is taking part in.  What would that poor bunny think if there were two North Pole dancers!?!?

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The next report came on the 18th from a blogger who was a little late for the contest… but got a little something special anyway as the “First Loser.”  Mark Bialczak made one of the best comments during my entire decades long Millionaire Journey, and I had to honor his frightening image of Regis taking a dump with a custom made card of how celebrities do their business…

Don’t you just love inside jokes?

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Nerdinthebrain and her family celebrated Christmas on the 18th this year, and one of the gifts she showed off was my adorable little hyena, Wiki!

Poor Buster… he’s gonna get killed twice in my card set!  But you wouldn’t want it any other way….

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Rose fittingly received a character who is all over the red spectrum of the color wheel, picking up the female half of my squirrel pup twins, Blaze!

A singing squirrel always makes the perfect gift for that hard to buy for person!

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Marilyn concluded another four-character day by showing off another of my pink femmes… the spunky little hedgehog Lil!

While the Santa hat kinda dampens her spiky purple hair, which is her best feature, it’s still classic Lil!

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By the time Jenn got her card, she had totally forgot she had even entered the contest!  Who in the hell sent her a Christmas card from the US, she wondered?  But sweet Angel has a way of bringing back all the good memories…

I absolutely adore this quote from Jenn’s post!

“To make a long story longer – here’s the sweet creature I received, on my Christmas tree, because isn’t that where angels belong?”

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That left us down to four cards still outstanding on the morning of Friday the 19th… including the one almost everyone was hoping for!  It wouldn’t be until Sunday evening that the next report would come in… but our contest was about to come to a thrilling conclusion very fast as my crocheting triumvirate was about to show their hand!  It took the reigning champion of my Contest of Anything YoungAtFifty an extra day to post her card due to that nasty bug that’s been going around… but the delay was worth the wait as she got my newest character, the pretty purple skunkette Kati!

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Right on her heels was my Aussie Aunt Sharon, and just which one of my gang would be lucky enough to take up permanent residence Down Under?

Why the other squirrel pup Sulphur, of course!  And here he is posing with many of Sharon’s other treasures, including a couple squirrels and her beloved Carl Barks “Donald Duck” comic books!

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And so…. with only Evil Squirrel and Rainbow Donkey left to claim, just who did Squirrel Picnic’s Jennifer Olivarez end up with?  She’d had her card for a week now, but was planning a special reveal with her good friends Hodge and Podge.  Because I was so impatient on wanting to see the result, she allowed her two friends to open up their present from The Nest early…. and just who did they get…….????

Yep, they got Evil Squirrel himself!  It looks awful cold on that branch… Evil might want to borrow one of those Christmas sweaters!

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And so in the end, it came down to the one card that was almost universally at the top of everyone’s list… my magnificent unicorn of a different color, Rainbow Donkey.  And the only participant in the contest who had yet to receive their card was Running Heartless… who had been rooting and rooting for RD to come her way the whole time.  And it was now an absolute certainty that she had indeed won the character lottery!!!!

But what if you win a lottery, but never get the prize, does that still make you a winner?

It seems that Rainbow Donkey has taken an unexpected detour through the US Mail and is currently….. well, who know where.  He could still be on his way to RH’s place, or maybe back to my mailbox as undeliverable, or perhaps…. he’s forever lost in the black hole of the United States Postal Service along with a squirrel quilt and Bon Ami canister I was once supposed to receive.  Then again, maybe this proves that unicorns really don’t exist after all!

And so, I can’t show off my wonderful Rainbow Donkey card here because it hasn’t been received, and I never took a picture of it before I sent it out.  More importantly, though, Running Heartless got nothing out of this contest but a pretty neat but fucked up story… and a perfect lesson in how unfair life can be sometimes.  I’m still holding out hope that RD resurfaces on one end of the pipeline or the other… but if he’s still MIA by the new year, I will draw her a replacement card and have Buster paw deliver it to her himself if I have to.

And so… that’s how the contest went.  Like any game, there were winners and losers, as well as plenty of twists and turns along the way!  I hope you all enjoyed playing along, or even watching from the sidelines if you didn’t get in on the action.  Oh, and as a public service message….

UPDATE: 12/29/14!

I received the card I sent out to Running Heartless back in the mail on December 26th.  Not recognizing the cryptic “R.H.” I had addressed the card to on the envelope, she had marked it “Return to Sender” when she originally received the card during the first week of the contest!  Well, we fixed that the second time around… and to officially close this contest wrap-up post, here is the wonderful Rainbow Donkey card!

I can’t believe I forgot to color his eyes… but I guess I was more concerned with making his rainbow mane and tail look vibrantly beautiful!