Down the chimney or through the door?

By James Clark / Columnist

Come in, grab a seat, and welcome to this week’s Business Pulse. Remember, it’s always OK to have a Merry Christmas in Business Pulse land because if someone is offended, we don’t care.

By now, the stockings have already been hung and jolly ol’ Saint Nicholas has already made his way down the chimney. Either that or, like me, you’ve been explaining how Santa comes in the front door because there is no chimney.

For this edition of Business Pulse, I won’t keep you long. Christmas is a time for family, not necessarily business news, so I’ll go directly to the day’s nonsense.

It starts with the story of an exceptionally rare American songbird called the “veery” that was recently spotted by birdwatchers in Britain’s Shetland Island. It didn’t take long for word to spread and pretty soon every self-respecting birdwatcher was rushing to catch a glimpse of the veery.

The rare creature was soon spotted again, but not the way birdwatchers had hoped. According to Scotland’s newspaper, the bird was eaten by a cat. That pesky food chain!

I also want to make this important announcement: No Business Pulse column will ever be published on Christmas day without at least one mention of a dumb criminal. Yes folks, this is the start of a new tradition we can eagerly anticipate every seven years.

The dumb criminal comes to us from Fruitport Township, Mich., where Louis Jasick was participating in a scavenger hunt with some friends. This was a pretty neat scavenger hunt where you had to collect all sorts of unique items to win.

One of the items was to have your picture made with police officers eating donuts.

So you can probably guess what happens next. Our friend Louis Jasick approaches officers and kindly asks if they will go along with the request. Fortunately, these are some good-humored officers and they are more than happy to oblige.

Jasick was there eating donuts and enjoying a little police companionship when the idea suddenly took a turn for the worst. One of the officers believed he recognized Jasick as a man with a felony warrant against him. A quick check revealed that in fact was the case and Jasick was arrested. There’s no word on who picked up the tab for the donuts.