Beware the Ides of Shelf Critter Theatre… where impending and fucked up doom is always just a dagger away.  No need to be so dire, so maybe for this Thursday’s SCT meet and greet, we’ll feature one of the gang’s more benign members… and I do mean members plural.  Let’s take a look at those seemingly innocent little squirrel children and see what we can rat them out for this time…

Hmmmm… do kids still get in trouble for smoking MARIHUANA?

NAME: The Squirrel Children.  There are five of them, and that is how they are always referred to collectively.  Individually, they are credited as the completely imaginative Child 1, Child 2, Child 3, Child 4 and Littlest… apparently in descending order of age.

SPECIES: Squirrels (No shit, Sherlock!)

SHELF PERSONALITY: The squirrel kids represent an extended family of brothers who seem to always be in the center of trouble.  They are young, naive, and still mostly afraid of cootie filled girls…

Stay away, crew! That girl is POISON!

RUNNING GAGS: When the kids get caught up in some form of trouble, the four older brothers always immediately finger the Littlest, who initially denies being the one to blame, but is always forced to give the shitty explanation for what happened.  Nothing fucked up about that, that’s just how it works with siblings…

I’d look worried too, kids. Corporal punishment hasn’t been banned on the Shelf…

The children seem terrified of girls, which creates all kinds of problems for them since Tina loves to tease them.  They usually fight off any prepubescent urges they might have by believing that girls are contaminated with cooties and one of the middle children will often bring up a fucked up warning tale about what happened to a certain Johnny when he played with a certain Suzie.  This usually works out well with how the children generally communicate… in bits and pieces with the dialogue going down the age range.

Miss Twilight! Why does she have two buttholes?

ESN PREMIERE: The Squirrel Children starred as the other Cratchit kids in my A Christmas Carol parody.  Their only other pre-SCT appearance on my blog was as the children pestering “Uncle Bashful” for a story in the awesome Tales From the Rock, in which they find the most clever way to bribe Bashful into humoring them…

How could you resist that bott…. er, those faces?

WHAT’S IN A NAME: Well, since the kids don’t have real names… their generic titles I use are the result of my laziness and lack of imagination, obviously…

ICONIC SCT ROLE: The children haven’t had a starring role in any episode yet, but often create some of the best comic moments when they do appear for bit parts.  Their appearance in the truly bizarre Year End Clearance not only set the tone for their future work, but was an integral part of what made that one of my best SCT episodes ever…

It’s always helpful to have a dog around that actually does eat homework.

WHAT ARE THEY?: Like Chip, they appear to be little squirrel figurines made out of porcelain.  Unlike Chip, there are no markings on them to reveal their exact origin… but they’ve probably been around for a while, especially the four with their front paws on the ground.

WHERE DID THEY COME FROM?: The four older ones were estate sale rescues by my good friend Hottie.  The brownish colored squirrel standing upright came from a different person I know from my Millionaire message board (who inspired the policewoman who occasionally appeared in my comics).  The oddball came first, back in 2010, while the other four followed a few years later.  You know you are a die hard squirrel person when people send you little squirrel figurines out of the goodness of their hearts…

Good! That’s less I have to hand out on Christmas!

CAN I GET ONE TOO?: Yeah, good luck.  I have no idea what their original story is, and a few minutes in Google Images revealed no figurines that even resemble any of the kids.  So if they’re not one of a kinds, the others made just like them are all probably either broken by now or locked up in Al Capone’s vault.  I just know they’re cute as hell, and have the perfect angelic faces of little shit-eating children that need to be grounded until they’re old enough to kick out of the nest…

Way to lay down the law, Rainy!

Come back next Thursday for another completely not innocent critter(s) from my collection…