If You Give a Squirrel a Cookie . . .

Tales from the duck pond . . .

It was a winter morning at the duck pond.

It was so cold that all the ducks were standing around on one foot.

When, suddenly, a furry individual with a huge bushy gray tail appeared!

"Who's that?" asked the ducks.

It was a squirrel, and in its wee paws it held something round. A cookie! With chocolate chips!

A squirrel with a cookie?

The squirrel turned the cookie around in its little paws, took one dainty bite, then another.

"Nom! Nom! Nom!" said the squirrel.

Suddenly there was a raucous noise overhead. Black shapes appeared on a branch way up high.

It was a group of crows. They peered down from the tall tree.

"Is that a squirrel with a cookie?" they cried. "We MUST have that cookie!"

On the ground, the squirrel kept eating. "Nom! Nom! Nom!"

Two crows flew closer. They could almost smell the cookie.

"We know you have a cookie and we're coming down there and taking it!" cried the crows. "The cookie is OURS!"

The squirrel took two more bites. It twitched its tail.

Then it carefully stowed the cookie in its cheeks and took off!

Faster than lightning, the squirrel bounded through the snow with the cookie in its mouth.

Scamper, scamper, scamper! Up the tree it went, lickety split!

Into a secret hiding-hole went the cookie.

The squirrel carefully covered the cookie with leaves, using its wee paws. Covered it up some more.

Now the cookie was safe!

Then it scampered back down the tree.

The crows were waiting nearby. They were watching.

But there was to be no cookie breakfast for the crows on this day.

At the bottom of the tree, the squirrel twitched its tail.

And it smiled its best and brightest chocolate-chip-cookie smile.


*Editor's note: I did not give the squirrel this cookie; the squirrel showed up with the cookie. This story is entirely true. What happened is fact. The words the creatures spoke are, of course, based on my own interpretation and imagination. :-)

The song: country music legend George Strait, with Christmas Cookies.