Such is the Way

After Tweed, Birnie, Biwi, Mack, and Paddington brought the honeybees to their brand new beehive, Tweed sprayed them with a sugar-water solution. Once the bees were bloated on the sugar water and feeling very happy and sleepy, the Teds gathered around a cozy, little campfire, where the older Teds taught the youngsters how to roast miniature marshmallows. 

When everyone was munching contentedly on a roasted marshmallow, the older Teds started telling ghost stories. Tweed started off with a scary tale of the ghosts of horned toads that haunted the Amazon. “They are toads who just keep on croaking even after they’ve croaked,” he said at the end of his story. All of the older Teds groaned at that one, as the younger ones stole glances over their shoulders while scrunching a little closer to each other every time a cricket sounded.

Letta told a story of two star-crossed lovers who only found true happiness after they turned into ghosts. “Aaahhh,” the younger Teds sighed at the end of her story, and they all smiled a little more freely as they slowly turned more marshmallows over the fire.

Then Birnie asked, in a low, conspiratorial voice, “How many of you know that we have our own ghost right here in our own back yard?”

“We do?” asked Itsy, hopping up and looking excitedly all around.

“Watch it, Itsy!” Benjamin shouted, ducking away from the flaming marshmallow Itsy was brandishing erratically as she hopefully searched the woods for the ghost.

“Sit down and eat your marshmallow, Itsy, sweetie,” Shoshonna urged her. “If you don’t, it could fall off into the dirt.”

“Or burn a hole in somebody’s fur,” Benjamin interjected.

“Benjamin!” Letta admonished him. “Leave her be, please.”

“Well! She’s a danger to others,” Benjamin insisted.

“His ghost isn’t out there just yet, Itsy,” Birnie informed her. “He doesn’t usually come out until much later. So you might as well sit down, eat your marshmallow, and listen to the story of how he got to be a ghost.”

“Oh,” said Itsy, disappointedly. “Okay.” She sat back down and poked her already blackened marshmallow back into the flames. Turning to Lily-pop who was sitting next to her, she said, “Be careful with your mashmellow, Lily-pop. You might poke somebody with it, and smear it all over them. Then you couldn’t eat it anymore.”

“Oh,” said Lily-pop quietly, turning the marshmallow at the end of her stick very carefully. “Okay.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Benjamin muttered before turning back to Brighton who was feeding him melted pieces of marshmallow from her stick.

“His name was Billingham,” Birnie told them, resuming his story. “He was a squirrel. He lived right up there,” everyone looked over to the woods where he was pointing, “in a hole at the top of that big, triple oak growing on the edge of our woods.” Their heads bent back, back, back as they tried to see up to the top of the big old tree.

“Billingham was a deep sleeper, kind of like Bentley, except he woke up more often, especially in the summer. He didn’t like waking up all that much, though. He much preferred to sleep, especially in winter when squirrels hibernate just like bears do. He loved to sleep the winter away.

“He slept a lot in summer, too. So much that he buried fewer acorns for himself in preparation for the winter months than other squirrels did. During winter, the only time he woke up was when he got hungry, and even then he had to be really starving to rouse himself. He had such a hard time getting up in the winter that even when he did he never really woke all the way up. Most of the time he barely even got to half awake.

“So it was that when he woke up in the deep of winter the night of the big ice storm that he wasn’t quite all there, so to speak. Crawling out of the hole from his nice comfy nest, he couldn’t really tell if he was awake or dreaming. It didn’t help any that once he poked his nose out into the bone-chilling night the whole world seemed to have changed. Everything around him looked like it was covered with a thick coat of glass that sparkled in the moonlight. Only it wasn’t glass; it was ice. But Billingham didn’t know that, and being more asleep than awake, he never really figured it out.

“The weird glass-coated world stopped Billingham in his tracks, but just for a second. He quickly put it out of his mind because his only reason for being half-awake in the first place was to dig up some food and get back to sleep as soon as possible. The longer he stood stock still in his doorway, the colder he was getting and the more sleep he was missing.

“So, whipping his bushy tail once in irritation and dismissal of any and all of the weirdness in the world around him, Billingham jumped out onto the branch right outside his doorway, intending to scoot down the trunk of the tree and scamper around to several of his secret hiding places to gather up enough acorns to tide him over for another couple of weeks of sleep. Unfortunately, the minute his paws hit the ice-covered branch, he slipped and fell. Fortunately, he was able to grab a tight hold around the branch with all four paws. Unfortunately, although holding on tightly to the branch, he ended up twirling around and around and around.

“The thick coating of ice on the branches sent Billingham corkscrewing down until he slid up against a clump of smaller branches, which brought him to an abrupt halt. That was the only thing that kept him from sliding right off the end. Unfortunately, the shaking Billigham had just given the branch, plus his added weight on the ice-covered tip proved to be just too much. With a sharp crack, that end of the branch snapped off and fell down through the air. Billingham fell right along with it. He fell really fast, and he fell a really looonnnggg way down. Until – bam! – he hit the ground, hard. So hard it knocked the wind out of him.”

“Oh, poor skirl,” Itsy said, absently munching on her third-degree burnt marshmallow. 

“Poor skirl,” repeated Lily-pop, who was daintily picking pieces off of her marshmallow and putting them in her mouth.

“Yes, poor Billingham,” agreed Birnie, continuing his story.

“When he came to a long while later, he couldn’t remember at first exactly where he was or what had happened to him. But, he still felt hungry, very, very hungry. At least he found himself on the ground. Granted, it was cold, ice-covered ground. But he was on the ground. So he scampered off as best he could on the ice in the direction he thought the nearest hiding place was for one of his acorns.

“Slipping and sliding, it took forever for him to make any headway, but he finally made it to his secret hiding place. After taking a second to catch his breath, he then bent over and made ready to scratch his way down to his hidden acorn. Imagine his surprise when his paw went right straight through the ice and the dirt – without making a dent in either one! He was shocked! Plus, he was starving. He took another swipe at digging down to the delicious acorn he knew was waiting for him, with the same unbelievable result – his paw went straight through the ice and into the earth without making any hole at all!”

All of the younger Teds said, “Oooooo!” all at the same time and leaned in closer to the fire. All eyes were on Birnie.

“Nobody knows how long it took Billingham to wake up to the fact that he was a ghost. It was quite a shock once he finally realized it, of course. Especially since being a ghost didn’t keep him from still being very, very hungry. But as a ghost he couldn’t find anything he could eat. Even when he found an acorn lying on the ground, he couldn’t eat it because ghosts can’t eat anything, you know.”

Again all the younger Teds said, “Oooo!” – but this time they said it with more sympathy than fear. Teds know the meaning of hunger, or, rather, the intense pleasure of eating. So their sympathy for Billingham’s unrequited hunger was palpable.

“Well, at least he could sleep. Each day at the break of dawn he floats back up to his nest way high up in that old, oak tree and sleeps and sleeps the day away. But, every night, he wakes up feeling famished and floats back down to the ground to search for something, anything, to satisfy his ravenous hunger.”

“Ooooh!” everyone said, and they all turned in unison to search the shadows of the woods, to see if Billingham the squirrel’s ghost was roaming in the shadows in there looking for something to eat.

“So you want to be careful if you go out in the woods at night,” Birnie finished up. “You never know if you’ll run into Billingham’s ghost or not. But if you do, don’t mention anything about acorns. He doesn’t take kindly to that kind of thing.”

Suddenly, a rustling of leaves was heard from the woods, and someone yelled out, “Wait! What’s that?” It sounded like Biwi’s voice to me.

With that yell, all the younger Teds yelped out a mass, “Yaaahhhhh!” and suddenly there was a stampede from the campfire, up over the deck, in through the doorway – where they would have put a hole in the screen door if I hadn’t held it open for them – and on into the house, where Thea and I were getting ready for bed.

With dozens of little, whimpering Teds hugging our ankles and legs, Thea, doing her best not to smile too much, looked down and said, “We thought you were camping out tonight!”

Several of them moaned, “Nooo!!!” Itsy, dancing from one paw to another while simultaneously holding onto Lily-pop’s paw and waving her stick with its bits of burnt marshmallow at the end of it in her other paw, explained, all in a rush, “Bildinghan the ghostes skirl is out there! He slides on the trees in the sky and on the ground in the woods looking for somefing to eat, but he can’t eat it ‘cause he’s a ghostes! Birnie said!”

The sounds of the older Teds laughing and talking drifted in from the campfire, along with the unmistakable sound of a canner of Mason’s root beer being popped open.  

“Okay,” I said to the little ones still clutching Thea and me as tightly as they could, “who’s got wet feet?” Wet feet are the inevitable outcome of Teddy fright. When they get scared, their poor little kidneys just let loose, leading to wet feet.

Paws shot up all around. “Well, then,” said Thea, gently, reaching for the paper towels, “let’s get everybody all cleaned up and nice and fresh, shall we?”

“And once that’s done,” I told them, “we can all settle down for a story about Pooh.”

“Yaayyy!” everyone cheered. Then, as Thea and I washed and wiped their paws, they started requesting their favorite stories.

“Tell us the one about Tigger climbing the tree!”

“No, the one about Eeyore’s birfday!” requested Itsy.

“The one where Pooh finds the North Pole!”

In the end, we all climbed into bed, and I read all of their requests until everyone but Itsy fell asleep. Itsy rarely sleeps. Outside the older Teds were still telling stories and chuckling amongst themselves, though they kept their voices lower now.

I thought for a moment about the ghost of poor Billingham the squirrel searching fruitlessly in the woods for some acorns to eat. Then the bright, clarion laughter of Biwi, our very own resident Body Softa, rang out clearly in the night, and, looking over at Thea asleep on her pillow, I smiled to myself. Mr. Fluffy saying, as he often did, “Such is the way it is,” sounded softly in my head. Such, indeed, is the way.