WELLINGTON COUNTY – The County of Wellington Library has announced the winners of the fifth annual Olive and Fred Robins Junior Short Story Contest.
It is open to Wellington County students attending Grades 4 to 6, who are invited to submit original short stories between 500 and 750 words.
Grade 4 student Finleigh Sardi-Bradburn of Erin and Grade 5 student Jack Moore of Elora are the two 2022 top prize winners.
Moore’s story follows.
Peanut Tails
By Jack Moore
AHHH, WHO STOLE ROBERT?!
Two hours earlier…
Hi my name is Charlie, Charlie the chipmunk.
But I’m a lucky chipmunk because I get free peanuts from humans. Unlike my stinky old neighbour Red Squirrel the red squirrel.
Like what kind of name is that? Anyway, do you like peanuts? That’s a silly question, everybody likes peanuts!
Let me tell a story that involves peanuts and mystery. Earlier in the day, I was running over to the nearby cottagers, who by the way love to give me silly names like Bert. Whoever heard of a chipmunk named Bert?
Anyway, they had peanuts, so I scrambled up their deck to get some, but Red Squirrel came out of nowhere and chased me up and out of a tree.
I fell onto the cottagers’ dock. Suddenly, their German shepherd came charging at me. I had to abort into the freezing cold lake!
As I tried to scramble up the side of the dock, the dog had the nerve to pick me up in his smelly dog mouth. My karate training kicked in and I stuck my toe up his nose, which led to another unplanned dip in the lake!
Soon after, I returned home to my favourite tunnel, but I immediately felt that something wasn’t quite right. A second later, I realized my triple peanut pal, otherwise known as Robert, was gone!
Ahhhhhhh! Who stole Robert?!
I know who stole Robert, it must have been snail! Wait, no, that’s not right, it’s definitely Red Squirrel! I ran straight to his nest up in the mother oak tree. When I got there, he was collecting acorns.
I walked up to him with my cheeks all puffed out and said, “Give me back my peanut!”.
“What? I didn’t take your peanut Mr. Mini-Mouse, so scram,” said Red Squirrel with a grin.
“I know you took Robert,” I said with gritted teeth as I walked away.
As I angrily returned to my tunnel, a black squirrel rushed up from behind me in a scurry of leaves and said, “I couldn’t help but over hear about your peanut problem. I’d be happy to figure it out with you, and get to the bottom of this.”
We went into my secret bunker, well, it’s just my favourite hidey hole where I kept Robert.
We looked around and discovered that something had dug another tunnel leading into mine. My new and unusual companion found a paw print in the soft dirt and said, “Let’s see where this tunnel leads us!”
After what felt like hours, but could have been minutes, we heard a commotion ahead of us.
We stopped to listen, and out came a Skunk! We got out of there as fast as we could. It turns out we didn’t get out of fast enough. Sometime shortly after, we found ourselves in the human’s garden, rolling around in some juicy rotting tomatoes.
Black Squirrel asked “are you sure this will work, this stuff is disgusting!”
“I’m pretty sure that I saw the humans use this stuff on their crazy dog when he found a skunk last spring,” I replied.
After rolling in the leftover tomatoes, we still stunk, but we had a job to do. We headed back to my bunker and checked out the mysterious hole again.
As I looked up, I noticed some black and white fur stuck in the dirt above my head and said “the skunk must have taken Robert, but I’m not going back down that tunnel to get him.”
When I turned to leave, my foot kicked something in the dirt. I investigated and was so excited at my discovery.
I yelled, “Robert, it’s you!”
We hugged, well I hugged Robert, for a very long time. When I showed Black Squirrel what I had found and where, he got up, turned and walked away mumbling, “I am not getting paid enough for this.”
I then yelled back, “Paid, who said anything about getting paid, but thank you! Skunk sprayed buds for life.”
“Ya, sure we’re BFFs” Black Squirrel whispered sarcastically.
After celebrating with Robert, I made my way to Red Squirrel’s nest and apologized.
Red Squirrel’s only reply was, “Ya ya sure, whatever squirt, just get out of here, you stink!”
If you are wondering whatever happened to Black Squirrel and I, well, since no other animals could stand our skunk-like smell, we became pretty close buds.
And as for Red Squirrel, well that’s a whole other story.
