What do you do when you can't afford to go on holidays this year to the Canary Island? You worry about shit. Any shit will do!

If you're not being ploughed six feet under by the Common Cup in your local Scottish Episcopal Church you're being chewed to death by imported rodents!

I saw the story first on the Sky News page under the headline

"Diseased Chipmunks Could Invade UK"

There followed a picture of a relatively inoffensive looking chipmunk chowing down on a toothsome bit of peanut. Whatever disease it has clearly hasn't affected its appetite. The first line of the article proper offers a little more information:

Britain is set for an invasion by thousands of diseased chipmunks coming from France, experts have warned.

One's interest is piqued, of course, by all of this. Invasions of the British Isles are attempted rather rarely. One expects large quantities of masted ships sailing into the English Channel or barges assembled in the low countries or at least small fleets of long boats which can make it up many of the major rivers to threaten villagers. It's really all a matter of agency - how will these thousands of deadly chipmunks get to our shores?

These same experts (actually different experts from the earlier mention but they may take some of the same courses at Uni) offer the following prediction:

Nature experts fear tourists will pick up the animals and put them in their bags or car boots and bring them across the Channel to Britain.

Imagine the visual, if you will, of somebody chasing a chipmunk around the St Michel Fountain trying to stuff it in a handbag. Would somebody alert the policeman on the corner? What would he say, while shrugging his shoulders:

"Ah oui, Monsieur, ils sont fou, les Anglais!"

Once here, the newly liberated chipmunks will apparently set about adding Lyme Disease and Rabies to the Bird Flu and the Swine Flu we already need to worry about.

The Sun took up the story as well. Their headline was even more dire than Sky News:

Killer Chipmunks Threaten Brit Invasion

And they have something called a "Fact File" which gives you a map which outlines the vector of threat pointing directly at a British suburb near you.

At least they have a picture of a suitably scary looking chipmunk pretending to be Godzilla and letting us know that

"when I gets this pain I wants to do damage".

"Please" it's saying "could you pick me up off the sidewalk and let me loose in the car boot or in your wife's Gucci handbag the way thousands of your silly British compatriots are going to do because that's what you silly British do all the time.

Once it was in your handbag might it slip your mind that it was in there?

"A mint? You'd like a mint? I have one here in my bag....somewhere....let's see, purse, specs, evil infected rodent....oh bother, I forgot about that, it's dead and fusty now...no....sorry....no mints this time!"

I do intend to announce this Sunday that the extension of Eucharistic hospitality to "all the baptised" specifically excludes chipmunks.