Why do I now have a mental picture of a christmas tree with a charred, smoking rat perched on the top like an angel that had just crawled out of a sewer and topped itself...(in more ways than one)
Or rat baubles. Smoking, greasy smelling, occasionally electrically arcing rat baubles coupled with the smell of really quite suspiciously cheap chinese food.....Or for a really brief, but spectacular display, couple it with new years fireworks, by using not a domestic power supply but a marx generator capacitor bank and baited copper bus-bars. xmas tree rodent-plasma roman candle.
Come to think of it..would santa's suit provide much insulation, I wonder.....two strips of metal, one on either side of the internal surface of the chimney and a pressure-pad switch at the bottom. Ho Ho bbzzztrrrrakkkkHnngshplorsh! lets see what he left parked on the roof. And who's for venison this year instead of turkey?'
At least people would start taking down the trees in a timely manner, as the flambee'ed rats begin to start stinking.
"Is she gone yet?"