Once upon a time there was a seemingly sweet little girl whom everyone called Red Riding Hood. Her real name has been forgotten but we know she earned here nickname because she always wore the red riding hood sewn for her by her mother. (Makes sense, huh?)

Red Riding Hood was the delight of the neighborhood. She always went out of her way to speak to all and to make them happy. She never knew her father as he died fighting for your right to vote or something in one of King Cole’s foreign wars for banking supremacy. Her gentle mother made a meager but honest living selling home-grown fruits and canned jams and jellies.

One day Red Riding Hood’s mother asked the little dear to take some fresh fruit to Grandmother who, it seems, was not feeling very well. Grandmother lived on the other side of a small but dense (and thus, dark) forest. Red Riding Hood was delighted as she loved walking through the woods, smelling the flowers, and conversing with her animal friends.

She had not soon set out when she met a company of manly woodsmen who were taking a break from felling trees. Red Riding Hood waved and said, “hello!,” as she skipped along. The woodcutters smiled and waved back.

Deeper in the woods Red Riding Hood stopped to pick some flowers for Grandmother. She thought they would help cheer the old woman just a bit. As she stopped to examine some wild gardenias a shadow fell on her. She looked up to see a large, shaggy wolf standing there, eyeing her. She jumped up and hugged the beast, thinking she had made a new and furry friend. She didn’t know the old wolf.

She didn’t know that he was working as an informant for the police in exchange for a lenient plea in the disappearance of several little pigs. In exchange for his freedom the old wolf had agreed to work with the police in order to bust up Red Riding Hood’s mother’s unlicensed fruit distribution business. He had also lied about Grandmother using medical marijuana.

The crooked old monster feigned interest in Red Riding Hood’s story about taking flowers and fruit to her ailing Grandmother. The wolf insisted that better flowers could be found along the longer path to Grandmother’s house. It was his intent to have Red Riding Hood waste time while he took a shortcut to the old lady’s house. In an unmarked van several blocks away, burly men listened intently to the conversation. The wolf wore a wire.

The little girl took the wolf’s advice and went off in search of prettier flowers. The wolf immediately darted off to Grandmother’s abode. Upon reaching it he went inside, beat the poor woman, and left her tied up in the closet. After rummaging through her refrigerator and jewelry box he made himself at home in her bed.

Eventually Red Riding Hood arrived with fresh flowers for Grandmother. She knocked on the door. “Come in,” said a strange voice. Red Riding Hood went inside and looked around for Grandmother. She thought the rooms looked ransacked but tried to take no notice. Then she saw someone in the bed. “Come closer,” said the voice.

“Oh, Grandmother. What big ears you have!” exclaimed Red Riding Hood.

The wolf did not have time to answer. At that moment a kindly woodcutter charged in with his axe at the ready.

“Get back! That’s a wolf!,” he yelled as he kicked the old lech out of the bed. He raised his axe to strike. His blow never fell.

A flash-bang grenade went off, knocking Red Riding Hood from her feet. In an instant dozens of heavily armed storm-troopers made a dynamic entry!

“He’s got a weapon!” screamed the foremost of the overweight tax-feeders. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang went their rifles as they dispatched the stunned woodcutter. The shooting was later justified due to “officer safety”, resisting arrest, and a violation of the Endangered Species Act (16 U.S.C. § 1531, et seq.).

One of the loose rounds went through the closet wall, striking Grandmother and shattering her hip. She fell through the door crying in pain.

Red Riding Hood saw her bleeding Grandmother and rushed to her side. Her furtive movements caught the eye of a jackboot. “ZAP!” Red Riding Hood was tasered and beaten about the head and shoulders. She died at the hospital the next morning from blunt force trauma and a taser-induced heart attack. “Serves the dirty little fruit-peddler right!” boasted an unnamed police spokesman. The hefty public “servant” added, “she stole flowers too!”

At the same Grandmother’s house was targeted a simultaneous operation took out the woodsmen for illegal logging operations. Several were shot to death. The survivors were tried and convicted for, among other things, felony murder (the deaths of their colleagues).

The old wolf thought himself safe. Indeed the operation had gone exactly as a police investigator told him it would. He was about to make his getaway and head over to Peter’s Grandfather’s home for another assignment when one of the government thugs noticed how much the wolf resembled a dog. Pursuant to police policy all of the officers suddenly felt threatened. The wolf died in a hail of bullets, shot in the back.

Some days later Grandmother was recovering at Red Riding Hood’s mother’s house. They were mourning the girl’s passing and terrified about the coming medical bills. Both women were killed “resisting arrest” when a combined FBI and FDA S.W.A.T. team executed a warrant in search of further untaxed fruit.

At his home miles away, one Jack Sprat said he felt safer knowing all the domestic terrorists had been subdued. His corpulent wife grazed on Cheetos and watched FOX News.

The moral of this story is: obey the law or die. Or, just die. The law. Something like that.