Once upon a time, there was a marmot named Beatrice. Beatrice was a very special marmot because she had three eyes. You might think this was a useful trait, but it merely triplicated her vision and made everything so blurry she couldn’t hunt. She depended on her boyfriend Reginald for food, and Reginald was a lazy, good-for-nothing loser who usually just brought home roadkill and pretended he’d killed it himself. Beatrice wasn’t stupid, but she was usually too hungry to care.

They lived in a hollowed out tree in the forest. They slept till late in the afternoon, since Reginald was in a marmot rock band and stayed out until all hours of the night. Beatrice didn’t really care for their sound, which was mostly hissing and screeching, accompanied by Bernard, the French import marmot, banging on a rabbit skull. Despite her distaste, she tried to be supportive of Reginald’s creative endeavors.

One day she was sitting in the tree feeling sorry for herself. She felt ugly and freakish because Reginald’s band members had been making fun of her third eye, and she was really hungry because last night’s dinner had been nothing but muddy, rotten frogs. Just as she began crying, there was a poof of green light and a fairy appeared.

Beatrice had always distrusted fairies. She didn’t like the way they pranced around and sang stupid songs about love and flowers, and their clothes were always ragged and rather suggestive. They acted like they were sweet and kind, but she’d heard rumors about them eating human babies and such. Not that she much cared for humans, but eating their young was kind of revolting. This fairy hovered gleefully above her, sprinkling rose petals and glitter in a very annoying manner. A petal got into Beatrice’s mouth and she choked and had to spend several minutes trying to cough it up while the fairy waited patiently, as if she were used to this sort of thing.

“Oh Beatrice,” sighed the fairy in a wispy, sweet voice. “Don’t cry about your third eye, for in it lies more power than you could ever dream of.”

Beatrice said nothing and watched the fairy skeptically. The fairy seemed disappointed in her cautious reaction. She flapped her silvery wings and flew over to Beatrice, touching her third eye.

In a flash, Beatrice could see clearly! And it wasn’t just ordinary sight—she could project some sort of silvery-green light through the third eye. She trained her light beam on the fairy and was about to utter words of gratitude when she saw exactly how froofy the fairy was. Glitter and rose petals? Were those flowers poking out of the tips of her antennae? Those little purple slippers with the curled-up toes were obnoxious, there was no way around that.

“Damn,” thought Beatrice as she examined the fairy. “Get some real shoes already.” Suddenly the fairy plummeted to the ground, and Beatrice saw that the ghastly slippers had disappeared and were replaced by steel-toed combat boots, whose weight her wings could not support. The fairy lay in a bloody heap on the ground.

Beatrice felt momentary remorse, but it was soon overcome by an overwhelming sense of power. Her new light beam could mold reality to her wishes! All she had to do was focus her beam of light, and whatever she desired would happen!

A marmot had never felt so much power.

Beatrice smoothed her fur and left the dead tree for the last time. She marched down to Reginald’s band practice space. There they were, all five of them, making a racket and galloping about like they were God’s gift to rodents. To hell with that, she decided. She fixed her beam on Reginald’s face (he was quite ugly, now that she could really see him) and said, “This is for all the stinking, maggoty possums you brought me!” and Reginald was covered in insects squirming all over his body.

She turned to Bernard. “This is for making fun of people with deformities!” and suddenly Bernard had six arms, none of which worked.

Systematically, she exacted her revenge on each marmot, heedless of their shrieks of terror. When she finished, she walked out of the forest, contemplating how she would take over the world with her new powers. She saw a car approaching on the nearby road. Boldly, she stepped into the road and stood on her hind legs with her mouth open, thinking, “Stop and give me your food!” To her delight, the humans rolled down their windows and squealed, “Oh, how cute!” and dropped peanuts into her waiting mouth. She did this to several more cars until her belly was heavy with rich food.

This was unfortunate because her overloaded gut deadened her senses. She was sadly flattened when she failed to hear a driver approach. Reginald later came along and dragged her body to the band members, where they ate her, consuming her flesh and eradicating the terrible spells she’d put on them. They used her bones for musical instruments and lived out their pathetic, gory marmot lives in infamy.

Therefore, I say to you: never binge on newfound magic powers.

I also say to you: this is based on a true story. There was a marmot in Rocky Mountain National Park that stood in the middle of the road while people dropped food into its mouth. I saw it. Was it using supernatural powers? What do you think? All I can say is don’t feed the wildlife. You might be the unfortunate recipient of magic powers controlled by power-hungry rodents.

Ever notice how so many Splarks stories feature downtrodden scapegoats who eventually transcend their handicaps? Inspiring with its can-do attitude, Splarks brings you tales of optimism and personal revelation…except for this story about Dorcas the Squirrel.

Dorcas means “gazelle” in Greek. It was an odd choice of name for a squirrel, given that the little rodents are are short and stocky with none of the long-legged gracefulness of a gazelle. But Dorcas didn’t care.  She was the squirrel equivalent of the alpha bitch in your high school. You know that girl who was always dropping hundreds of dollars on haircuts and highlights? In squirrel terms, this meant that Dorcas had the glossiest fur you’ve ever seen on a squirrel. Remember that girl who lived in the ritziest house in town because her dad was a celebrity attorney, and she mentioned this fact whenever possible? Dorcas’s dad lived in the tallest oak tree in the meadow, and it produced the largest acorns ever. However, Dorcas, concerned about weight gain, refused to eat them.

“Dorcas,” her mom scolded, “you need to eat! Winter is coming and if you haven’t fattened up you’ll starve to death.”

Dorcas rolled her eyes. It was her mother’s seventh “You’re Gonna Die!” speech of the week. “Whatever, Mom. Nobody likes a fat squirrel.”

Dorcas was tragically misinformed. Various internet memes prove that fat squirrels are universally lauded as adorable. Chubby little squirrel cheeks and fat white squirrel bellies adorn greeting cards everywhere. Pudgy squirrels are so popular that people buy squirrel feeder kits to make sure they stay fat and warm in winter.

But Dorcas was young and had not yet experienced a winter. Her mother spoke of Mother Nature throwing cold whiteness from the skies, shriveling the leaves on the trees and turning the creeks hard. Food would not grow, she said, and the world would grow cold.

Dorcas thought this was a load of hooey. “That’s retarded,” she snorted.

“Dorcas! That’s not a politically correct word!” Her mother worked with mentally challenged rodent babies and disapproved of such language. “I’m warning you: don’t doubt Mother Nature’s wisdom. Eat!”

But Dorcas had already flounced off to her drey, which is squirrel-terminology for “nest.” Little did she know of the travails she would soon face.

And here, I have two choices. I can take the J.R.R. Tolkien approach to travails and write 80 pages of “And the small brown squirrel trudged the deep snow. For days she did not eat for there was no food to be found, and her belly grumbled and her step grew weak.” My other option is to summarize in an Ernest Hemingway style, such as “Winter came. Snow fell. No nuts grew on the tree. She thought of the summers in France.” Because this is somewhat of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story, you get to pick and imagine that I wrote whatever you prefer.

When spring came again, just as her mother said it would, Dorcas shakily exited her squalid nest. She ate all that she could find and reflected on her ordeal. Her mother had been correct about the cruelty of this “Mother Nature.”

This must not happen again. Mother Nature must be stopped!

For the first time in her life, Dorcas had a purpose beyond ridiculing squirrels with less shiny fur, talking to boys, and being skinny. She had a new goal: to seek revenge on Mother Nature! She collected sticks and sharpened them with her teeth. She scoured the forest floors for poisonous plants. She learned judo and created a garrote from the spines of weeds. She would teach Mother Nature a lesson about killing off food unnecessarily!

And here, I would like to tell you that Dorcas eventually found Mother Nature, learned about the cycle of the seasons, and came to peace with the necessity of eating and the regenerative purpose of winter.

But you must know Splarks better than that by now.

Intent on destroying Mother Nature, Dorcas roamed the countryside for a few days in righteous anger. However, her rage quickly dissipated when she found a group of young squirrels who lived behind a moonshine farm. They partied incessantly and Dorcas soon lost her purpose in a frenzy of binge drinking and casual sex. Squirrel experts may frown and point out the solitary nature of squirrels, and suggest that they do not “party” together. But Dorcas and her friends were trend-setters, refusing to conform to outdated assumptions of squirrel behavior.

Five months later she was mother of a noisy brood of baby squirrels, whose father had conveniently dumped her for some stupid red-furred squirrel two counties away. Dorcas was fat, miserable, and winter was approaching yet again. Mother Nature was still not dead. Dorcas had failed in her quest.

Clinging to the last sad scrap of her great mission in life, Dorcas felt there was no other option but to kill herself. She dropped off her children with the babysitter then went to the nearest country road. When the next rumbling metal beast appeared, she leaped in front of it, dying instantly. A nearby crow rejoiced over her tasty corpse.

But the problem with squirrel suicide is that death is a sacred transition between this world and the next. When a squirrel enters the afterlife in a despondent, angry, or otherwise rotten state, these unresolved emotions cause the unfortunate squirrel to wander hopelessly until luck intervenes or until Mother Nature takes pity and rescues him or her.

Do you think Mother Nature was going to rescue Dorcas? Hell no! Mother Nature was not inclined to assist the murderous, particularly when the object of the murderous desire was Mother Nature herself. And so Dorcas wandered the forest for eternity. She haunted her living peers and frightened hikers with her ghostly interludes. Always, always she longed for just one acorn.

It is a tragic tale, isn’t it? If only Dorcas had eaten the acorns as her mother wished! If only she hadn’t been such a bitch to Mother Nature! If only she had migrated to Florida for the winter! If only she had chosen to live!

But you see, Dorcas was strangely happy in her new state.

Deep down, she was arrogant and disrespectful and loved making people feel bad. Therefore, what could be more fun than frightening people for all eternity, watching them cower in fear before her ghostly apparition?

I’ll tell you what: nothing.

Haunting was her most joyous activity, and oh, how she enjoyed it! Winter’s chill could not touch her. And best of all, she never had to eat another nut again. Sure, she longed for them, but that was because she wished she could throw them at unsuspecting hikers. She had truly made the most of her situation, and no other squirrel was so happy in a phantom existence.

THE END

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Interesting squirrel fact: The Ratufa is a giant squirrel that can grow to 3 feet in length. Given that the squirrels sometimes throw nuts at me when I’m hiking, I shudder to think of this thing.