The Battle of Pine Lake

For centuries to come, this shall be written in our children's history books as the Battle of Pine Lake. It was a warm day in August of 2003 when this dreadful tale occured. The Pine Lake Anti-Squirrel Militia had just been formed with news of a raid on a child of five years. My brother, my second cousin Chris, and my second cousin Katie were the members of our motley force. We were at a campground on Pine Lake with our grandparents, who had trailers there for the weekends. We would be staying the week. We formed when we heard of a raid on a five year old child who was walking without escort. We were just sitting around planning our mode of attack, when we heard noises outside. The soldiers followed me as I got out of the trailer to see what was going on. To my horror, two squirrels were tearing a chipmunk to pieces. We had fed chipmunks some peanuts earlier, and I suppose a few more peanuts were dropped, and as the lone chipmunk went to retrieve it, he was set upon by the squirrel thugs. I watched in horror as they tumbled around, and tore at each other. The chipmunk was mortally wounded by the much larger squirrel. A claw or tooth had tore the chipmunk's abdomen open. The squirrels took the peanuts and ran back to their stronghold. We ran up to the chipmunk, but quickly realized there was nothing we could do. The chipmunk was a mess. We tried to make him comfortable, and gave him a peanut, but it didn't help. He died right before our eyes. Right there, we vowed that we would take revenge on those squirrels. Our first offensive operation of the conflict would take place that day. We assembled first for a recon mission, trying to pinpoint the location of the Charlie. We found a few nests of the buggers in the trees. As we turned back to form a plan of action, a squirrel jumped out and bit Katie on the leg, and tried to scratch her up more. Immediately Christ kicked it and sent it about two feet. I brought a shovel down on it's head. We helped our wounded back to HQ, and carved a notch on the shovel to denote it's first kill. We decided that we would begin with a 'Shock and Awe' campaign, like that used by the Americans in Iraq. We immediately started hurling rocks at their nests. It just wasn't cutting it. On the way back, we got our second kill when Chris pounced on a squirrel with a net, trapping him as Nick brought a large rock down on it's head. PLASM 2, Squirrels 0. I then decided we should bait them with peanuts, and utilise the shovel some more. We requisitioned three more shovels from the occupants of the campground, and we made four smell piles of peanuts in different places, where we stood ready with our shovels. It worked like a charm. I got another notch on my shovel while Chris earned his first. Katie wounded one, but he escaped with seemingly a crippled leg and a laceration on his back. We now wanted a live captive, to show them what we were capable of. With a fishing net and the peanut baiting method, we captured a squirrel and took him to the boat we fish with. We had the perfect place in mind. There was a very small rock island in one area on the lake. We would maroon him. On the way there, Katie showed sympathy for the squirrel. She said she didn't want to kill the enemy anymore, and that he was cute. We would not have any disobedience within our own ranks. We held a court martial and sentenced her to being marooned. If she likes the squirrel so much, she should enjoy being with him on the shitty little island. We landed, and we bound the squirrel's legs with twine, and put him on a tether around a 5 foot high sapling so he couldn't get into the water. We didn't know if they could swim or not. We also left Katie, and told her we would come back in 20 minutes, but would make it an hour if she untied the squirrel. We then went fishing, but weren't catching anything, so we decided we could use some live bait. We went back to the island. We let Katie back on board since her 20 minutes were up, but decided against using the squirrel as bait. We just left him there. Three days later, the fighting had subsided. We had only killed one more squirrel. Another attack had happened, a scratch on a woman's leg. We found a squirrel near her place that probably did it. It tried to attack us until we fed it a peanut, then we caught it, weighted it down with a large rock, and threw him off of the end of a dock. The next day while swimming we dove down and found him still tied to the rock, except dead. We checked back on the island and the squirrel was dead, still in his tether. He was most likely killed by a bird, because he had a lot of his meat missing. We did our part against the commie scum, and we made the threat of guerilla attacks against the residents of Pine Lake a thing of the past. The squirrel hordes of that area have been pacified. We urge others to unite and fight the menace as well.

Copyright © 2002 SLM. All rights reserved.