*Hopes* by Anna K You see a squirrel in the park. She has just arrived and is gazing up at a towering oak. Suddenly, she snaps out of her daze and scampers into a hollow about twenty feet up. She quickly peeks out, spies you and dives back into her home.
This squirrel’s name is Laitna and this is her story. Laitna has just scurried into her new home. Standing there she could smell the frosty air. It felt nice and cool as it rippled gently through her dainty whiskers. As she looked
around, she felt hopeless about living in the oak. The walls were soggy and covered in brittle cinder. The floor was cracked and cold. This place needed some work. She poked the wall. “Eww! The wall is squishy!” Laitna squeaked. The next day, Laitna woke early in the morning and spent the rest of the day cleaning. She scrubbed every last flake of brittle cinder off the walls, cleaned the floor, stuffed wood chips from a nearby playground into the cracks in the floor and put a thin layer of mud on the walls and floor so that the yellow flower juice that she would color the walls with would show better. Before she could paint the walls, she had to find moss for the floor. It turned out very easy as there was a neat groom (a place with moss) near the bottom of the tree. It was so soft that Laitna nearly crashed her plane into the Land of Nod! After her brush with sleep, Laitna tugged the moss back to her hollow and stuck it to the mud on the floor. Now she had a rug! Laitna finally painted the walls with plant juices (she went with pink, not yellow), had Raymond the chipmunk build her a woodchip bed, got more moss, and found some feathers to decorate and line her bed with. She was finally finished remodeling and sat down on her bed... Laitna was riding a giant butterfly and she suddenly was knocked off by a storm of aromatic flower petals. They swept her away to a perfect house and set her down gently. The petals turned into her blanket. She looked around and saw a mouse standing in the doorway. Laitna woke up. She was shivering. “Oh, no!”, she exclaimed, “I forgot to get a door!” Laitna scurried over to Raymond’s. She arrived panting.
“Anyone (huff-puff) home?” panted Laitna. “Laitna! What brings you here so early?” came a familiar voice. “Raymond, I forgot to get a door for my house!” Laitna exclaimed suddenly. “Can you finish it by lunchtime?” “Lunchtime?” Raymond sounded surprised. “I can do much better than that! I will have it done by brunch! You live in a hollow, right?” “Great, and yes, I do live in a hollow. Bye!” Laitna left. Laitna got her door installed, gave Raymond a few nuts as payment, then went inside to test how cold proof it was. It worked! Nowadays it was cold even during the day. The next morning when Laitna woke up, she looked
around and saw a mouse standing in the doorway. She was ever so surprised! “Don’t worry, blossom. I won’t hurt you! My name is Clara and I heard you are new around here. I came around to check on you. Do you have food stored yet?” “I’m Laitna and no, I don’t have food yet. I was working on my house. I have noticed the frost, though.” “Well, get cracking! Winter is just around the corner and when it comes, it really gets bad,” warned Clara. With that being said, she left, and when she left, Laitna did too. It was cold, all right and Laitna couldn’t find anything but a few rotten acorns. She got lucky with a fresh acorn that she found, still on a tree and a few walnuts that needed to be thawed. As she wrapped her food in a piece of cloth that she had found, she saw motion in the bushes. It was a huge animal, a tabby cat, to be exact. Suddenly, it pounced! Luckily, Laitna had good reflexes and ran away. But the only problem was that as she was running, she let go of a corner of her cloth and the precious food tumbled out. The next day, Laitna went to where she had been running the day before and the good news was that the food was still there. The bad news was that the nuts were frozen to the ground and Laitna spent most of the afternoon trying to pry them out of the ground. She failed, even with a stick. That night, Laitna lay in her woodchip bed and thought. She thought about talking to Raymond and Clara about how to find food during the frosty day. When the sun finally peeped over the horizon, Laitna was ready to go she scampered because it was bitterly
cold and snowflakes had already started waltzing down from the sky. By the time she reached Clara’s house, she wasn’t too cold anymore. Laitna used the nutshell knocker. Nobody answered. Then as she was reaching for the knocker once more, the door opened and Clara was there, holding a string and chopping a mushroom. “Nice contraption!” said Laitna, “Did you make it yourself?” “Oh, no. Raymond made it for me”, confessed Clara. Laitna then found a good spot to change the subject. She started by talking about Raymond and finding food. Clara agreed to help, but told Laitna to leave Raymond out of it. “He’s busy enough”, she had said. By the time Laitna and Clara got outside, the snow was whizzing, not waltzing down. The two rodents started walking. When Clara insisted that they had reached the right spot, Laitna stopped and looked around. There were a bunch of average pines surrounding them. Clara seemed to read Laitna’s mind. “Look closer,”she suggested. Laitna did and she saw ghostly white berries that turned blue if you rubbed them. “Are these edible?” Asked Laitna. “Yes, blossom, but only if you cook them.” “Thank you!” Laitna hugged Clara. “Come over any time!” And with that being said, it was Laitna’s turn to leave. But somehow she couldn’t go inside her house. Then, it landed softly on her like a snowflake. “I LIKE WINTER!!!!” Laitna shouted into the swirling flakes, “I REALLY DO!!!!!”