A fly-by-night operation, for sure

In the interest of keeping our nation safe from the menace of bad acorns, a government division known as the TSA - Touchy Squirrel Agency - has instituted mandatory full-body scans and pat-downs of all flying squirrels before they can become airborne.

This has not been easy to implement, particularly when the fullest if those full bodies barely weighs an average of 85 grams (less than 3 ounces) and does most of its gliding nocturnally. This has not been easy particularly because, whether or not the aforementioned suspect rodent is harboring an Acorn of Evil somewhere in those tiny body folds, at the very least he or she is in full possession of the Incisors of Destruction, notorious flesh-piercing instruments are not shy about making an appearance any time of day or night.

Still, TSA agents have their orders to follow: Flying squirrels everywhere are being told to drop their tails, open their flyer flaps, known as patagiums, and give it up for the good of their country.

The battle cry can be clearly heard throughout the land: "HEY, DON'T TOUCH MY JUNK!!!!" - followed by a rapid chattering of tiny teeth.

"Is it really worth the delay and inconvenience?" muse their larger cousins, the eastern grays and the fox squirrels. "We would rather travel by branch."

"Don't look at me when it comes to going anywhere by air," reply the chipmunks, 13-lined ground squirrels, golden mantled squirrels and other land-locked kin. "Our side of the family has kept its feet on the ground for generations."

"Now," lament the nation's flying squirrels, "everyone truly knows that I am naked beneath my fur."

And what of the bad acorns themselves? If they cannot be transported from Point A to Point B by some airborne good-squirrel-gone-bad, where will they end up surfacing?

Stay out of the wilderness, friends:

Surveillance informs us that the bad acorns, no longer being stashed in the various crevices of bad squirrels-in-transit, are ending up buried instead in the Big Bad Woods where, quite predictably, they will grow up to become Big Bad Evil Trees, hundreds of times their original size.

"See?" say the proud agents of the TSA. "The government's system is working."