Picture this:

It’s around 1:00 a.m. on the first of November in this year of MMXIX.

I’ve just returned home in a candy-corned stupor from some manner of haunted manor revelry, only to find a startling scene.

My box of Elf on the Shelf Cereal—the exhausting full name of which is Kellogg’s The Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition: Sugar Cookie Cereal with Marshmallows—had toppled from its sturdy coffee table standing onto the living room floor, while meters away, my dear impressionable cat’s food bowl had been knocked across the kitchen floor.

Could some freak breeze or errant radio frequency have unseated the box, triggering my chubby son’s bite and/or flight instinct? Sure.

But could some freaky malevolent watchdog elf have manifested as a cardboard projection, siphoning sustenance from cat kibble before rifling through my unmentionables? Also sure.

One thing’s for certain: good or bad, I need to eat this whole cereal. Only then can I break my homestead free from the decked-out thralls of the shelved elf’s limply puppeted surveillance state.

So you’ve heard of the Elf on the Shelf, but now get ready for A Sentry in Your Pantry. Continue reading →