The Cage

The sunflower farming experiments in last week’s post was interrupted by a brazen daylight seed robbery by Crooked Tail, better known as the “Seed Bandit.” The Woodpile Constable was in hot pursuit. We had one of those high speed chases like you see in those old Hollywood films. The dirt was flying as Crooked Tail desperately tried to elude the Constable. The Bandit’s mistake was trying to hold onto his stolen loot in his cheek pouches. It weighed him down considerably. After about fifteen minutes he collapsed with exhaustion. Looking up, he asked the constable why he had even broken a sweat yet? Constable chuckled and told him he was training for a Chipmunk Triathlon (Running 1 mile while transporting 75 seeds , digging 50 feet of  tunnel, and climbing a 200 foot tall tree).

We don’t get much crime at the Woodpile. We have a circuit judge who holds court every three months. Most of the time the judge has to deal with bartenders trying to collect unpaid bar tabs, border disputes in the community garden, and ‘munks trying to get out of their tickets for driving with overloaded cheek pouches. Lucky for Crooked Tail, the court was in session the next day so he did not have to wait in jail for three months. Crooked Tail decided to represent himself and told the judge quite a sob story about his terrible childhood which led him to a life of crime. What a tale it was, there wasn’t a dry eye in the court room. The judge was about to release him if he promised to mend his ways …. But suddenly the court room doors slammed opened and the judge’s wife ran in. Out of breath, she pointed to her smart phone. The bailiff hooked it up to the TV screen and everyone watched security camera footage of his wife’s prize heirloom sunflower seeds which she had just planted being stolen by the Seed Bandit.

One look from his wife, and the judge sentenced Crooked Tail to 30 days in jail and to be fed rabbit food the whole time. No ‘munk had been sentenced to eat rabbit food in over three hundred years!

The Constable has a holding cell at the Police Burrow which is mostly used to let citizens sleep off their hangovers but we don’t have a jail, never really had a need for one.  The County Jail was full after they broke up a large seed smuggling ring. The Woodpile had to improvise a bit. We borrowed a live trap from one of our human neighbors and stuffed full of choice rabbit delicacies like carrots, lettuce, and cauliflower.

Crooked Tail was not a happy ‘munk. He was expecting a nice burrow jail cell with the usual amenities, three square meals of seeds per day, cable TV, exercise yard, and fellow inmates to learn new tricks of the criminal trade from.

The Constable had some trouble figuring out how to close the door to the ‘jail.”

He finally found the release mechanism but didn't realize he was standing on the door as he hit it!

 

After staring at the rabbit food for a half hour, Crooked Tail demanded to see the judge, he wanted to make a deal. In exchange for getting probation, he would testify against the head of the mafia seed syndicate. Critter law enforcement had been after this mysterious mafia boss for years. This sounded like a great deal.

“Stripes” the mafia boss got a ten year sentence. After 12 hours, the jail smelled so bad the prison guards all quit! At the 24 hour mark the Woodpile had to be evacuated due to the “aroma.” Suffice to say, Stripes only served one day in prison before being released.

  

Crooked Tail looked on with mischievous amusement.