POLLY WANTS A NIPPLE.

I want you to be honest. Totally honest. Did you ever steal anything?

As a kid did you ever take some candy, slip it into your pocket and walk out of the store without paying? Ever pick up a neighbor’s newspaper and tuck it under your arm like it was yours? In a supermarket, did you ever reach into the coin cup and find some change that the customer before you left by mistake and keep it instead of turning it in to the cashier? Well did you? Liar, liar, pants on fire.

All of us have taken things that don’t belong to us. Most times it’s not a big deal although clearly illegal and often we’re embarrassed by our action. We like to separate our little peccadilloes from walking into a bank and sticking it up. That’s really stealing. How about cheating on our income tax? Everyone has done that once in their life. It’s no big deal – the government would only waste that money on some shady pork barrel thing.

Did you ever wonder why seemingly honest men and women take things that don’t belong to them? Why do wealthy people shop-lift when they can easily pay for the merchandize? It’s a sickness. Stores lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year on shoplifting. The rest of us wind up paying for the stolen goods through increased prices. This Rant is not some moral judgment on mankind. I leave that to the idiot Pat Robertson. There’s a point to this.

Dig. A woman living in Fort Meyers, Florida, who never before stole anything in her life, was arrested for shoplifting. No big deal, you say? Tell that to her employer, Baby Exotic Birds. Jill Knispel, 35, didn’t reach into the cash register and help herself to some chump change. No, her crime was much more diabolical – she faces felony charges after hiding a rare Greenwing parrot in her bra and walking out of the store. Yup, she was arrested for padding her bra – with a stolen parrot.

She allegedly stole the bird so she could trade it for a vintage 1964 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. Not a new Mercedes…a broken down VW. She claims she couldn’t resist telling the car’s owner how she got the animal. Wrong, the car owner turned out to be a friend with the owner of Baby Exotic Birds and turned her in. The bird-in-the-bra was worth $2,000. In the words of Howard Stern, “Tough titty, lady.”

DNA tests confirmed the bird’s identity and Knispel was charged with grand theft. DNA helped nab this boob thief but couldn’t nail O.J. Simpson…go figure.

What I can’t figure out is when she stuffed the parrot into her bra and walked out, didn’t anyone in the store notice that her left breast was moving up and down and saying, “Polly wants a cracker?”

There’s a lesson in all this – maybe if she wore a wonder bra she would have gotten away with this dastardly crime.