The Gathering of Nuts

    With a loud squak, King Scruffus commenced the annual Gathering of Nuts. From the Central Oak, thousands of squirrels descended, some slipping and toppling over others, hitting the ground headfirst, sounding like a chaotic drumroll from a distance. The squirrels spread out in all directions seeking the nuts they'd buried over the year. They dug up the nuts, shoved them in their cheeks, and made their way back to the Central Oak to deposit them before King Scruffus.

    Two Squirrels, Gnuthead and Fuzzball tried sneaking some nuts for themselves, which earned them each a hard rap on the head from the staff of King Scruffus' head enforcer, Gnutmajus. Chittering sounded throughout the cavernous trunk of the Central Oak, and when all the nuts were deposited and accounted for, Gnutmajus raised his paws, demanding silence from the crowd.

    The chittering lowered, and once it was silent in the trunk, King Scruffus raised a large mallet above the sacrificial nut. The largest of the deposited nuts was place in a special sound amplification chamber, and when King Scruffus slammed down on the nut with the mallet, the crack of the nut's shell reverberated through the entire trunk, shaking the rest of the nuts so violently they their own shells cracked.

    Once the reverberation ended, the crowd looked around at all the newly opened nuts. They all looked at King Scruffus, and when he gave the sign that the Great Crack was successful, every squirrel in the trunk began frenetically devouring every nut he could find.

    The squirrels ate nut meat and drank nut wine long into the night, and the next morning, unconscious squirrel bodies littered the ground underneath the Central Oak. Gnuthead and Fuzzball hung by their hind legs from one of the branches, and King Scruffus himself snored away on a separate bough.

    With the squirrels of the Central Oak satisfied, so ended another year's successful Gathering of Nuts.