While loggers have spent years in the unemployment lines waiting for a decision on the softwood lumber dispute, and cattle farmers are getting their first taste of the same with Ottawa seemingly oblivious to their plight, we now at least know why. You see, the federal government apparently has much bigger fish to fry, or perhaps more accurately, one very small squirrel to deport, and is using all of its considerable resources to ensure this squirrel leaves immediately, if not sooner.

So much for thinking those rusty gears of government couldn't turn at all, much less with the vigor of a high speed Moulinex.

Meet Sabrina, ladies and gentlemen: three quivering ounces of pure evil, an alien invader of the most heinous kind, a fuzzy little terror who will steal your cashews from right under your nose, and who has drawn the ire of under-worked civil servants and governmental veterinarians in Ottawa for having the audacity to not fly south when ordered to.

As you may already have heard, Sabrina is a domesticated northern flying squirrel, purchased in Indiana, declared at the border, and ultimately immersed in the legal fight of a very young century, replete with a high-profile lawyer in Clayton Ruby, and a suddenly rabid government that seems content to sit on everything from sponsorship scandals to investigations of how certain steamship lines receive federal funds, yet have responded faster than a caffeinated cobra to the attack of the killer squirrel.

Well, she might seem like a killer if you happen to be a sunflower seed. By all appearance, action, and most importantly, a complete bill of health from a veterinarian, she is as much a threat as a teddy bear, and twice as cute.

But it's the possibility that she could have been a threat, and more importantly, the violation of a rule very few people even seemed to know about until just recently, that's part of the problem here. You see, hard-working civil servants want to protect you from monkey pox, a disease from Africa that made a brief, sickening (but not lethal) appearance in the US, and is feared to be carried by rodents, hence the ban.

However, while an argument can be made that the indiscriminant importation of animals can lead to the spread of foreign diseases and potentially damaging new species (MTV and HBO cable feeds come to mind), this was not a case of a smuggler filling his coat full of rodents and making a midnight run across the border. Sabrina's owner, Steve Patterson, went through every procedure, and signed every form, and did everything short of getting an official letter from the Pope before he traveled south and bought his furry bundle of legal problems.

And legal problems he has had, from threatening letters to police knocking at his door and demanding that he turn over his delinquent squirrel. One has to wonder if there weren't discussions about bringing in the JTF2 for a quick Special Forces snatch-and-go operation; though apparently wringing the poor man dry of money is the preferred route at the moment.

Indeed, why not when even the court costs get charged to Patterson, and that's when he won! Yes, the federal court threw this ludicrous case out, yet the government, in its infinite wisdom, pocket book and desire to be obstinate simply because it can, is going to appeal. By the time this thing sees it way to the Supreme Court, poor little Sabrina will be long past her last peanut, with her owner pulling three jobs just to pay court stenographers to record all this foolishness.

So while we continue with a health care system that's still on life support, while we deal with multi-billion-dollar submersibles that don't work and are now downright lethal to the wrong people, and contend with a fractious government that can't even sort out its throne speech much less get on with implementing it, the only thing the government seems able to manage with any sort of alacrity is the persecution of one Sabrina A. Squirrel. She's dangerous; she's a public threat; she's also seriously easy to kick around, which is about the only thing I've seen this government do with any speed outside of pay increase debates.

But I have to wonder...if I declare myself to be a northern flying squirrel when applying for a tax refund, will it speed it up any?