This is an original work.  Please do not steal.




Of Porta Potties and Psycho Squirrels
By Lori T. Strongin




     “If you two don’t hurry up, we’re gonna get caught!”

     “Well then Sam, how ‘bout you try lugging this thing?” Drew huffed, trying to prevent the oversized blue box from squishing either him or Bryan.

     “Yeah right.  Besides, I’m the look-out and you guys are the manual labor.”

     “And what, may I ask, is Chase’s job?”

     “He’s the brains.  It was his idea to steal the Porta potty shell and set it up in the girl’s bunk, after all.”

     Drew grunted again and shifted the heavy weight on his back, side-stepping a squirrel that had suddenly jumped into the path in front of him.

     “Hey!” Chase shouted from up ahead.  “Coast is clear.  Everyone’s still down at the lake.  Quit complaining and let’s do this!”

     The four teens crept the last few feet to their destination, Willow Wood Bunk—land of opportunity and frilly female lacey things ripe for the raiding.  Chase wasted no time in utilizing his prized skeleton key and unlocked the front door of the girl’s cabin.  Walking backwards like an airline flagger, Chase directed Drew and Bryan to the center of the bunk while Sam “supervised.”  With a hollow plastic “thud,” the mission was completed and Willow Wood had a new free-standing structure.

     Sam’s eyes shone with the light of inner mischief.  “This is the best prank ever!”

     “Yeah,” Chase agreed.  “We’ll go down in Camp Apache history for this one!  Now all we need to do is send Drew for some toilet paper.  And a toilet.”

     “Hey!  Why me?”

     Chase and Sam continued laughing, ignoring the sputtering boy.

     “What if we get caught you guys?” Bryan asked, gnawing a fingernail.  “My folks are away for the summer.  If I get kicked out, they’ll send me to my grandparents.”

     “What’s so bad about that?” Drew asked.

     “Well nothing, if you like the smell of cat pee and enjoy sitting on a doily-covered couch all summer helping your Gram knit and listening to your Grandpa lecture on how he used to make tomato soup from ketchup during the Great Depression.”

     A collective “ouch” issued from the other three.

     “No worries, Drew,” Sam said.  He draped a casual arm around the smaller boy’s shoulder.  “Remember, we’ve got an alibi.”

     “Since when?”

     “Since I told Danny that I was feeling all homesick and stuff and wanted to go talk to the camp nurse, and you guys all volunteered to take me there.”

     The four teens laughed at the mention of their clueless counselor Danny, who was well known at the camp as an undergrad psychology major looking for nutcases in all the wrong places.

     “Now we just go to the nurse’s office, saying we felt a bit dizzy in this heat, and have a nice nap in the air conditioning until lunch.  It’s the perfect crime!”

     Sam and Bryan laughed as they imagined the girls’ reactions to finding the Porta potty in their bunk, when Drew noticed one of their group was missing.

     “Chase?”

     The three boys looked around and found Chase standing unnaturally still near the base of Willow Wood’s front steps, staring into the forest just beyond the field line.  Drew saw the wicked smile crossing the blond boy’s face, and somehow knew that Operation: Cause More Chaos (a.k.a. Get Into More Trouble) was well underway.

     “Chase, what’s up?” Sam asked.

     Without breaking his gaze, he whispered, “We won’t need that toilet after all.”

     “Huh?”

     Chase extended his right arm, pointing upwards towards an oak several feet into the dell.  All Drew saw was a pile of sticks and straw weaved together with puffs of grey fur balanced between two thick branches.

     “It’s a squirrel’s nest.  So what?”

     “So what?” Chase asked, his eyes growing wide.  “You can’t tell me you don’t see the prank potential here.”

     Sam grinned maniacally.  “Who needs a toilet in your bunk when a family of squirrels lives there instead?”

     “Precisely!”  Chase took off in the direction of the groundskeeper’s shed, leaving Drew’s half-spoken disagreement in the dust.

     “Oh, no,” he said, hands in the air as he backed away.  “No way.  You can’t be serious.”

     Sam grabbed Drew’s wrists, halting his escape.  “Why not?  Think of all the lovely screams those girls will make when they meet our fine furry friends.”

     “I’m not touching those things.  They‘re rodents.  Rodents bite.  What about rabies, huh?”

     “So, we won’t touch them,” Sam said.  “We’ll find something to lift the nest with and chuck it through an open window.”

     “I don’t know about this,” Bryan said, rubbing his elbow.  “It’s kinda cruel.  To the squirrels, I mean.”

     “Thank you, Bryan,” Drew sighed, relieved that at least one person was on his side.
 
     Sam waved his hand through the air, as if brushing aside all hesitations.  “Nah, we’re doing them a favor.  Think of all the food the girls’ must have stored in there.  The squirrels will never have to forage for berries or stuff like that ever again.”

     Before Drew had the chance to further argue with Sam’s insane logic, Chase returned, a large shovel hoisted over his shoulder.  “So, are you guys in or out?”

     “Out.  Most definitely out,” Drew said, crossing his arms.

     “I…I don’t know.” Bryan stuttered.

     “‘I don’t know’ is all you ever say,” Sam mocked, punching Bryan’s arm.  “Come on.  Live a little.”

     “Bry, you don’t have to do this.”

     “Sure he does,” Chase said, clapping Bryan on the shoulder.  “You’re punking out and Sam’s the look-out.  I need a witness to this infamous moment in havoc-wreaking history.”

     “Well, I guess, since you put it that way…”

     “Great!” Chase smacked Bryan’s back so hard the chubby boy almost fell over.  He crept forward on tip-toes and approached the clump of branches, angling the shovel underneath the base and began to lift upwards.  He had the nest two-thirds of the way on the spade, when he suddenly dropped the tool and shouted “Ouch!” and covered his left eye.

     “What the…” Sam shouted, until he too cried out and covered his face.

     From his position just outside the tree line, Drew watched as Chase, Sam and Bryan and began yelling and jumping about in the style of old spaghetti westerns where the good guys got shot at and were made to moonwalk across a tavern floor.  The three teens covered their faces, hiding from their unseen foe, as they ducked and scrambled to escape.

     “What in the world’s going on?” Sam shouted as he wiped a small rivulet of blood off his forehead.

     “I hear something,” Bryan whispered.  He pointed a shaking finger at the darkened woods.  “All these high pitched noises.  You hear them, don’t you?”

     Chase nodded.  “Sure do.”

     The noise, at first like rubbing sandpaper, grew louder, grating on their ear drums and nerves.  The three friends looked around as the tree branches and small bushes surrounding them began to rustle.  For each step they dared take forward, they jumped two back and soon found themselves surrounded. 

     Chase bent down to pick up his shovel and shouldered it like a baseball bat.  “Alright.  Not funny.  Come out here, whoever you are.  Show yourself, you pinhead.”

     “Yeah,” Sam echoed as he raised his fists, ready to fight.

     The rustling stopped.  The woods were quiet -- too quiet for such a warm summer’s day.  Even the birds had stopped warbling.  The only noise the boys heard were the sounds of their own raspy breaths.

     A tiny grey squirrel emerged from the scrub brush, holding an acorn between its two front paws and chittering as if someone had made a fur-lined coat out of its mother.

     “Is that what this was all about?” Chase laughed.  “A squirrel?”

     “Stupid rodent,” Sam grumbled, kicking a leaf in its direction.  “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

     He took a step forward, only to find another squirrel blocking his path, this one also bearing an acorn.

     “Uh, guys?” Drew shouted from his vantage point outside the woody glade.  “You might not want to make any sudden moves.”

     The other three found themselves surrounded by squirrels.  Fat ones, grey ones, young ones, buck-teethed ones.  Countless squirrels of every imaginable size, shape and color encircled them.  Some chattered from their lofty hideouts among the tree branches; some from nests within the small bushes.  Several were even bold enough to come directly into the clearing.  Every single one was holding an acorn.

     Like the general of a great army, the first squirrel they’d encountered moved forward, settling at Sam’s feet.  Human and squirrel stared at each other, neither blinking nor moving.

     That is, until Bryan screamed.

     The horde of rodents began chattering again, which soon led to shrill shrieking.  Bryan attempted to run from the copse, only to trip over Chase, sending both of them sprawling to the ground.  Chase’s shovel was knocked from his grip and spiraled in the air like an overgrown baton, until it smacked Sam in the face, sending him to the forest floor as well.  All the while, the squirrel army approached until, at one final scream from the general, they loosed their projectiles, hurling their little wooden missiles like a finely honed platoon.  Chase, Sam and Bryan yelped like lap dogs, each turning over and over, trying to find safety from the Acorns of Death.

     As soon as the volley ceased, the three boys scrambled amid dirt, dead leaves and tangled limbs and crawled out of the woods, the war cry of the angry squirrels left behind them.  

     By this point, Drew was laughing so hard he’d fallen to the ground and had tears leaking from his eyes.  “Y…you should have seen your faces!  An army of squirrels kicked your butts…”

     Chase and Sam smacked the amused teen before stalking away from Willow Wood.  Bryan lumbered after them, limping due to his now-sprained ankle.  Drew jogged after them, still snickering.

     “When I get my driver’s license,” Chase fumed, “I swear I’m going to mow down every last furry rodent I find.”
Bryan scraped something from his forearm before shoving it in Chase’s face.  “Does this look infected to you?”

     “I think my nose is broken,” Sam moaned as he wiggled the bloody appendage.  “Thanks a lot, Drew.”

     “What?  How is any of this my fault?”

     “If you would have just gotten a toilet and some paper for the Porta potty like we told you to in the first place, this never would have happened.”

     More than a little peeved, Drew looked back towards the battlefield and smirked before removing a handful of acorns from his own pocket and proceeded to apply a lesson from the finest squirrel army at Camp Apache.