Agents of the Squirrel Nation

Gene Lempp likes history, archaeology, and squirrels. That’s an eduClaytion trifecta if I ever saw one. So I asked if he wouldn’t mind mixing up that concoction for a guest post. Here’s his offering.

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One of my fondest memories growing up is of watching the herds of squirrels roaming the freshly-mowed emerald plains of Illinois urbania. I would often see their furry-tailed scientists rustling behind well-constructed tree blinds studying me and the other school children as we made our daily migration to the education factories.

Sometimes they would don their stealth helmets in order to infiltrate our ranks for closer inspection. Curious about their Skiouros (as they call themselves) ways, I trailed one to their secret lands deep in the woods only to be cussed out for accidentally (as my lawyer claimed) interfering in the collection of the acorn tax from the local layabout oak trees (the legal case was dropped after my lawyer, Poison Ivy, promised I’d stay out of that part of the woods in the future).

Realizing that they could not keep me away for long, the squirrel intelligence agency (a.k.a. Shadowtails) recruited me as a sleeper agent. My covert control operative, Rocky, came up with the clever idea of relaying messages to me through the square movie theater in my parent’s home.

Rocky was a highly-decorated fighter pilot from the Great War against the Stray Cat Nation. While recovering from war injuries, Rocky met a moose with a head-injury and the two became fast friends adventuring and hunting a pair of Cat Nation spies named Boris and Natasha. While I was never able to help them catch these nefarious scoundrels, I was trained in the super secret squirrel language and made contacts branching into the high-tree network.