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Stolen Holes

     Hey, everyone. Back during the summer I had some time off and we put in a little putt-putt course here at the green retreat. If you saw it, you would shake your head or laugh but it was fun. We dug nine holes throughout the woods. Then I placed some of the plastic caps for PVC piping down in the holes. I did this because I like the sound of a golf ball as it falls in the hole. Then I went to Lowes and bought several bags of sand for sand traps, which we arranged in an artistic manner around certain holes. Ha, ha. There were plenty of hazards other than the sand, believe me. Tree roots, leaves, mushrooms, the list is endless. But all this is not the reason for this post.
    Not long after we put in the 'course', we noticed that an animal was stealing our holes. The plastic caps would be gone. We found some of them as much as 50 feet away from their hole. Others we have never found. I am confident that the local squirrels took them, because they are not nice people. I meditated about what a squirrel could possibly want with these things and here are some ideas.
1) They simply did it for spite because they are squirrels and they hold a grudge against us. The deal was, we quit feeding birds because the squirrels ate all the seed. A lot of history there.
2) The squirrels are building a house somewhere and decided "Hey, why should we buy drain caps of our own when these are perfectly good?"
3) They take these cups and use them for begging purposes. They wear dark glasses and pretend to be blind. They sit on the side of the road and play a little guitar and listen for the clink of coins in the cup. Then they take the proceeds and buy the darn birdseed.
4) The squirrels are radical environmentalists and want to keep 'their' woods pristine. Even now they are planning a protest march outside my house against the 'evil developers'. Sort of like the gopher in Caddy Shack.
5) They plan on using the caps as ornaments on their Christmas tree. On December 26, the caps will mysteriously reappear. The squirrels will assume an innocent expression as if to say, "Who, me?"
    From the author's green retreat, I'm CE Wills.

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