Don’t wait for the acorn to drop – get prepared now

October 21, 2010 – 10:36 am

The dark and disturbing tale of Chicken Little has a lesson or two for consumers when it comes to identity theft. The story goes like this…

Chicken Little loves walking in the woods, checking out the trees, smelling the flowers, listening to the birds singing…she’s a real tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, Mother Earth-loving kind of chick.

But as she was walking through her favorite part of the woods one morning, an acorn falls from a tree and hits her on the head. Now, you’d think since she’s spent so much time in the woods, Chicken Little would know what an acorn was and that they sometimes fall to the ground. But she must have been sniffing flowers the day that memo went out.

The bump on her noggin scares the little one, so she runs out of the woods, as fast as a chicken can run. Which isn’t very fast, by the way. Chicken Little had decided to run to the Lion and tell him the sky is falling – there could, of course, be no other explanation.

She ran into Henny Penny, who inquires why she’s running. Chicken Little tells her the sky is falling and that she’s on her way to the Lion. Henny Penny asks how CL knows the sky is falling, and CL reassures her that since it hit her on the head, it must be so.

The two of them begin running, and they run in to Ducky Lucky. Repeat the previous conversation, and add the Duck.

Ducky Lucky joins them, and off the three of them run, until they run into Foxey Loxey. Now Foxey is a sly one, and asks if they even know where the Lion lives. After a little hemming and hawing, and a little scratching of the dirt with some little bird toes, as well as eyeball rolling, the trio admits they don’t know where the Lion lives. Foxey smiles a Grinch-like grin, and tells the three plump, juicy, sweet little birds that he can take them to the Lion.

So Chicken Little, Henny Penny and Ducky Lucky follow Foxey right to his den. He invites them in, and the three little birds never come out again.

What kind of children’s story is this? The three birds die? Are you kidding?

But we can learn a little something from the methods of Foxey Loxey, which aren’t unlike those used by identity thieves. They’re every bit as sly as the fox, and as consumers, we’ve got to remember that we can’t make it easy for them to steal our personal information. In fact, instead of running around, crying, “The sky is falling!” we must be proactive and ready.

In other words, don’t wait for it to hit you in the head. Learn to recognize a “nut” when you see one.

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