TP. 63 STANLEY THE SQUIRREL

This tale of a tail, tells of an epic disaster that took place on a section of shore of Lake Michigan, a while ago. It involves Stanley, a Red Squirrel from Cedar River, Michigan. One day in May, Stanley stole a LED flashlight that straps to a human head. The object reminded him of his hero: Rocky J. Squirrel, who sported an unstrapped aviator’s hat with googles slid on top. Stanley tried it on and walked over to a patio door to see how he looked. He looked marvelous. When he flipped on the high intensity light, he looked more marvelous. Stanley headed down to the beach at dusk like he did every night, hoping to find his lost love: a girl squirrel who also wore a head lamp across the waters of Green Bay. Stanley sat on shore and scanned in a circle from the shoreline, looking all around. Right at dusk, there she was. Rotating her light right at Stanley to broadcast her love for him. Stanley kept moving his head 360° to look for predators behind him and for his unknown sweetheart somewhere out in the abyss. Just then, a Great Lakes Ore Carrier, with a load of iron ore 26,000 tons more than the Ella Fritzherald weighed empty, (RIP G. Lightfoot). It entered the Green Bay waters enroute to Sturgeon Bay for some repairs. The pilot was an apprentice that visually keyed in on the Pottawatomie Lighthouse to the left, on Rock Island, and then mistook Stanley’s rotating head lamp as the Chamber’s Island Lighthouse. This caused the giant freighter to go outside the shipping lane and go aground, spilling the entire load of iron off the shore of Cedar River. It was an environmental disaster that cost $100,000,000 in damages. To this day, Stanley still stands on shore and rotates around, looking for predators and his love across the Bay. His head lamp no longer works because the batteries went dead years ago. But Stanley now sports a bright red fur coat, compliments of the rusting iron ore polluting the spoiled Green (Red) Bay.