GOING ONCE… eBay has a drug-like effect on an otherwise fiscally prudent Squid. There was the sea otter hand puppet, which Squid won for $28.99. Then Squid triumphed in a white-knuckle bidding war over a Leon Panetta cloak rack ($65.80).

Last week Squid began ogling the “REAL stuffed Taxidermy MOUSE (RAT) with a cane,” described as a “very cute and friendly” specimen dolled up with a wooden base, straw hat and brass cane.

The description is succinct: “My chickens got the poor thing in the coop, he lived in the box for while and died, so I stuffed him.” Bidding started at $49.99, plus $12 shipping from Pacific Grove.

The seller is retired doctor-artist Olga Perry, who first earned Squid’s admiration by convincing the P.G. City Council to let her keep her three chickens. She and sculptor Jesse Corsaut did the rat-stuffing themselves, she says, stemming from their unfulfilled need for a model for Corsaut’s wax sculpture of John Steinbeck holding a mouse. Now she wants the cute carcass gone because her cats keep trying to kill it.

Alas, a lucky winner claimed the rat before Squid could wrap Squid’s e-tentacles around it.

DEM’S FEARLESS LEADER… Party Chairman John Burton? Oh, f*** yeah! The San Francisco lawmaker, known as well for his sharp, salty tongue as he is for his liberal politics, spent three decades as a California lawmaker (serving in the state Assembly, state Senate and Congress). And now he looks to be the next chairman of the state Dems.

Burton told the Sacramento Bee that as chair he wants to connect with more conservative parts of the state: “We have made great inroads into some of the red counties. I think we have an excellent chance of turning some of those red counties, if not blue, to purple.

“The party’s role is to do that. It’s to build a party.”

Squid’s got high hopes that the former state Senate leader will put the party back in the California Democratic Party. At any rate, he’ll be more fun than current Chairman Art Torres, a former senator, who will leave the post in April. Not that Squid has any beef with Torres, it’s just that Squid has always thought the Party’s blog could be spiced up a bit, maybe be a little meaner, with a few f-bombs thrown in for good measure.