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Santa's New Sleigh ~ A Chuckles & Buckley Adventure continues . . .

     Chuckles and Buckley left the lab shaking their heads with the thought of just how important this job was going to be. This was going to revolutionize Santa's worldwide toy delivery and make it possible to deliver all the toys in a much shorter time again. Even though Santa always made sure that all the toys were delivered on time, he usually had to involve magic and slow down time to the point that he could put in a weeks worth of work into one night. The old elves were very excited to report the new advances and the time saving devices Santa was going to get from Tyler and Tulley.
    
 The next afternoon, all of the plans were finalized and approved  by Santa.  Now it was now time to gather the building materials,  a very important part of this specialized mission. Tulley  suggested that they should use the replicator to make all the parts,  but Santa thought differently. Santa understood that a lot of the  magic and joy of Christmas was wrapped up in the sleigh, and it  needed to be constructed using some of the traditional ways to do  it. Fresh spruce trees were needed to build the body of the sleigh  and to gathering them would require a trek into the deepest and  oldest of woods.

     Chuckles and Buckley asked for volunteers to go and gather the trees needed. Several young elves stepped forward and soon a lumbering party was gathered. The doors to the workshop rolled back and four reindeer leaned into their harnesses and pulled a work sledge out the open door into the snow. A sledge is a lumbering sleigh large enough to hold long trees. The elves were instructed to move swiftly, because there were only a few short weeks left until Christmas. They were provided with an old map that showed a grove of spruce trees several days away and set out in that general direction. They were making great time, but a little problem with fog and a map that got hot chocolate spilled on it, threw them way off course.

     The leader of the team tried to remember what the map had looked like, but failed utterly. They figured that they had to be getting near their goal and also figured that because they were elves, they couldn’t possibly be lost anyway. As a matter of fact, they were so lost that they wound up many miles from where they should be.

     The work party had never seen these kind of woods before. All of the trees here glowed with an inner light. Each one was perfect in shape and all of them were so fragrant. They brought the sledge to a halt in the center of the grove and talked together.

     “I say we drop two of these,” said the leader, “then we turn around and skedaddle back to the Pole.

     “I agree,” said the second, “Let’s just cut and go. The other young elves were all nodding. They unpacked the big two-elf saw, along with axes and hatchets. Before long the woods rang with the song of metal biting into wood. They were not very thoughtful about the respect needed in cutting down the trees, and thus began the terrible fate of Santa's new sleigh. Had they been just a little wiser and more observant, they would have recalled a tale about the woods where the gremlins lived and watched over a sacred grove of spruce pine trees.

     Gremlins are fun-loving, mischievous creatures and and it is said a lot of accidents occur because someone had run afoul of gremlins and they are merely doing what gremlins do best and that is to mess things up. The gremlins lived on their piece of land and magically enhanced the entire woods.

     Unfortunately, this was where the work party had arrived and the elves had no idea they were in a sacred grove of spruce trees protected by gremlins.

          Golly the gremlin, guardian of this particular grove, was very good at his job and he guarded his trees with every ounce of his being. Golly was smart enough to realize he was no match for a dozen determined elves. He was in a generous mood, and might have consented to the removal of two trees. Had the elves been wiser, they would have asked to speak with someone for permission to cut the trees.

     If only, the elves knew they were in a forbidden sacred grove and if only Golly knew that their intentions were pure, then this misunderstanding might have been avoided. But then again, the forces of fate were set into set motion.

     Golly was furious at the way the trees were being treated. This was unheard of! These disrespectful little elves were just marching into his grove without so much as a ‘Hello’ and now they were chopping down the second tree.

      It is said that you don’t want to get on the wrong side of a gremlin or there will be serious, disruptive consequences.

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