WASHINGTON— Sounding a measured but audible alarm as Americans celebrate the 2014 Christmas season, the Department of Defense (DoD) today announced that all service members who weren't taken in by American families to enjoy the holidays this year will have to be "humanely put down.”

Though DoD works to find homes for tens of thousands of stray and often malnourished and abused soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines during the holidays, a shrunken budget coupled with an ever smaller number of adopted troops is forcing the Pentagon to take drastic measures this year, according to outgoing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.

“While we’d love to guarantee that these brave men and women have a warm, safe place to go this holiday season, a lack of funds is forcing us to make some tough decisions,” said Hagel, who had a small litter of scruffy and unwashed uniformed service members pawing at his feet during a taped address from the DOD News Channel’s studios late last week.

“And that’s why we’re asking you, America, to open your homes and your hearts by taking in one or more of our nation’s brave heroes,” Hagel continued, “so that they might have a hot meal and some holiday cheer to look forward to, rather than just a cold needle and some Sodium thiopental, followed by immediate and certain death.”