The Cookie Thief

Squirrel was generally a well-behaved squirrel, but he did enjoy the occasional bit of excitement. It was his habit to go into the village late at night and pilfer. ‘Pilfer’ was, Squirrel thought, a nice way of saying ‘steal’. He pilfered mittens, he pilfered socks. He pilfered chocolate and he pilfered fruit. Most of all, though, he liked to pilfer cookies.

On this particular evening, Squirrel in the village, loitering outside Mrs Hedgehog’s bakery in the inky-black night. He pulled a balaclava over his head to hide his features. He switched on his torch and shone it through the bakery window. He stared hungrily at a plate of just-baked cookies displayed on the counter.

Squirrel stuck a suction cup to the bakery window. Attached to the cup was a very sharp glasscutter. Using it, he sliced a perfect circle in the window. Carefully, he reached through this hole and swept a dozen cookies off the counter and into a sack. At that moment, the shop’s alarm went off, giving Squirrel an enormous fright.

Slinging the sack of crunchy treats over his shoulder, he scampered off to his tree house deep in the woods. He stacked a pile of cookies high up in his kitchen cupboard and sat down, exhausted.

But just then, he heard the angry voice of Officer Cat coming from somewhere down below.

“We have the place surrounded!” boomed Cat. “Come out with your hands up!”

“How did you know it was me?” yelped Squirrel over the edge of his tree-top house.

“That mask is a terrible excuse for a disguise! We could see your bushy tail on the security camera footage! We put two and two together and here we are, you rascal, you.”

But all Squirrel could say was, “Grumph,” because his mouth was full of all the delicious warm cookies that he didn’t want to give back.

And that is why squirrels don’t make very good thieves. Unless, of course, they manage to hide their tails.

SKILLS ILLUSTRATION

WRITTEN BY MICHAEL VINES