The creaky wooden door to the small hollow in the tree slowly cracked open, revealing the scruffy face of a squirrel, Squimble. His one good eye glinted suspiciously in the dim light as he squinted at the human outside. In his tiny, scarred paws, he gripped a toothpick he’d somehow fashioned into a makeshift “shotgun,” aiming it with deadly seriousness.

“What do you want?” he barked in a gruff voice, his accent so thick it was nearly impossible to understand. The faint smell of gunpowder and copper wafted from his hidey hole, adding to the strange tension of the moment. He glanced left and right, then leaned out just a little to hiss, “You one of them spies? Eh?!”