Once upon a shire

Once upon a time, Bilbo Baggins was baron of the shire. Hobbiton was a confessional shire. Confessional hobbits were taught to think the world began and ended with the shire. There was no reality outside Hobbiton.

For this reason, while baron Bilbo gave his hobbits 87 lessons on the Westminster Standards, and 350 lessons on the Federal Vision, he only gave them 7 lessons on prayer and 2 lessons on abortion.

Baron Bilbo was smart and studious, but an absentee landlord, much preoccupied and easily distracted. As such, he delegated the administration of Hobbiton to his deputies.

Some of his deputies were shadow deputies, who only put in cameo appearances every few years. His two principal deputies were Samwise Weakreed and Sobsister Britton.

Weakreed and Sobsister turned Hobbiton into a sanctuary city for enemies of the faith once delivered.  Orcs and Ringwraiths from Called to Confusion and the Land of Enns soon figured out that Hobbiton was happy hunting ground for poachers. Not only would they be given asylum in Hobbiton, but protected from mean old critics. Poachers could pick off defenseless young hobbits with impunity.

The baron had one good deputy, Jess Aragorn. Jess was wise, brave, faithful, and true. But Jess was a full-time knight, fending off jihadis in the outer regions of Middle-Earth. Although Jess would make a much better shepherd than Weakreed, Weakreed would make a much worse aerospace engineer than Jess.

Weakreed was like a golden retriever: friendly, trusting, and a bit dim. When poachers came to Hobbiton, Weakreed would wag his tail and lick their hands. As long as they threw him a chewy toy, like a rubber ball or pigskin bone, he’d be suitably contented while they had the run of Hobbiton.

Sobsister mistook poachers for stray puppies. As long as the poacher made piteous whimpering noises and pawed at her door, she’d take him in and give him a warm saucer of milk to nurse him back to health. An oddly overgrown puppy–with long pointy ears, and a long pointy snout with rows of long sharp teeth.

One-by-one, little hobbits began to disappear from the shire. No one knew what became of them.