Recently, Santa Claus made a rather unfortunate announcement.
Several of the reindeer have perished due to eating poisonous pet food.
Dasher, Comet, and Blitzen are no longer with us and Dancer is in a comatose state, at the local hospital.
"The health care costs are enormous, and we're not sure we can save him.
Currently he is on life support, and we are all praying for him," said the corporate communications lady.
"We were trying to save money on the high protein pet food from China, because our reindeer need lots of protein to fly tens of thousands of miles on December 25 every year delivering toys throughout the world," stated the CFO of Santa Claus Inc.
"We had no idea we had purchased poisonous food, but, now it doesn't surprise us because we also learned that the Chinese were painting toys for kids with lead based paint, something that Santa Claus Corporation would never do," said Mrs.
Claus.
We are trying to get our backup reindeer team in shape to handle the Christmas mission.
Rudolph, who only eats tater tots and pop tarts was unaffected by the poisonous pet food, but now he's gone into severe depression due to the demise of the teams top performers.
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer said; "our best athletes of our team, were also the ones who ate the most food, and therefore they were the most poisoned, I think it's just terrible, and I've been sick to my stomach ever since.
" Several of the polar bears also got very sick, but they have all recovered.
"We just hope we can put all this behind us now, and work hard towards the future, there is nothing we can do, or say to bring them back," said Santa.