Chapter 3: A Flip-Flopped World

As Barry and Halle try to sleep, they wake up when they feel someone rapidly tugging their paws. Halle wakes up first and knows it's Hammy. Though it's been one day since the accident that nearly killed him, the young squirrel shows no signs of exhaustion ever since he woke up in the tree. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Halle and her mate who have been trying to get some much needed rest after so much worrying.

Halle quickly looks outside and sees that it's still dark before addressing her son.

Note: The following dialogue is based on the Over the Hedge comic strip dated June 11, 2013.

Halle: "Hammy, this is the tenth time you've woken me up. I've told you: Wait until morning."

Hammy: "But I have another important question, Mom. Why do we have fingers on our paws?"

Halle groans in her mind at how she and the family have been having to re-teach almost everything to Hammy since he came to, but she answers unhesitatingly.

Halle: "Because the finger stork brought them to you."

Hammy: "I thought you said storks bring babies."

Barry: "They do. But others bring fingers, and the ability to walk upright, and the skills to climb on trees or other surfaces."

Hammy: "Ohhhhh. Thanks, goodnight!" (Zooms back to sleep beside his siblings)

Fortunately, it's been easy to re-teach Hammy with his…"simplified" intellect. But his parents haven't told him anything about his accident or humans out of the decision that the less he knows about those the better.

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Barry wakes up again at something pulling on his paws. He expects to see Hammy but instead finds Tammie.

Barry: "Hey Tammie, sleep well?"

Tammie: "Yeah. And so did you. It's already lunchtime."

Barry (Nonchalantly): "Oh, wow. I sure did sleep well—"

Suddenly a wave of panic strikes the squirrel.

Barry: "I slept in!? I NEVER SLEEP IN! Our food supply—!"

Tammie tries to hold back a giggle, but fails. Normally Barry would be curious, but with a half day of foraging lost he could only reply in anger

Barry: "How is this funny? You have a sick sense of humor."

Oddly Tammie doesn't react in fear or in confusion at her father's harsh tone. If anything, her voice is more jubilant than before.

Tammie: "Look outside, silly!"

Barry gets a grip on his emotions, now more curious than angry. And when his head is outside and looks at the ground, he gasps in utter amazement.

Around the whole tree and three feet up from the ground is a mountain of nuts and acorns. And standing on the peak is none other than Hammy. Most of the community of other squirrels is also staring in shock and wonder.

Barry: "Hammy."(His son looks up at him) "You did all this?"

Hammy (Talking without any pause between words): "Sure did, dad! When I woke up this morning Sammy told me that we, as squirrels, forage for food. So I went into the woods and found plenty of food and brought it back here. Did I do good?"

Barry: Good? You did fantastic!"

Voice: "If you define 'fantastic' as stealing!"

Every head turns to see Taylor, his mate, and son walking toward Barry's tree. When he gets near the nut pile, he takes 10 seconds to inspect it.

Note: Taylor was the one who spoke, but no surprise right?

Taylor: "Ah yes…The first quarter quadrant is from my family's nut supply. The top right is from the Anderson's, the mid left is from the Jonas', and the—"

Hammy: "I didn't steal these. I found them in the woods."

Taylor: "We live in the woods so that automatically means you took them from other families."

Barry (who has climbed down): "That doesn't mean a thing. Besides, Hammy wouldn't steal from anyone."

Taylor: "But he's changed since his electrocution, so how can you be certain that he still has the morals you so poorly instilled into him before then?"

Barry gives Taylor a death glare and is about to reply until Hammy beats him to it.

Hammy: "Electro…cu…tion…What's that?"

Barry: "I'll tell you later, Hammy. But answer me, did you or did you not take these from other families?"

Hammy: "No, I took them from there, there, there, there, a little from there, and a lot from there."

As Hammy pointed at each location it becomes obvious that he did in fact take it from the food stores of other squirrels. Barry sighs and puts a paw to his forehead while shaking it from side to side. He's about to comfort his son, who he knows didn't do it on purpose, until Taylor speaks loudly.

Taylor: "Ladies and gentlerodents, we have a THEIF!" (Points accusingly at Hammy)

Hammy: "But I didn't mean to. I don't know where everyone lived…I'm sorry."

Taylor (While looking at the crowd to make sure they were with him on this): "Oh, sure you didn't. That's exactly what a liar would say! And don't even think you can 'sorry' your way out of this!"

By now, Barry has had it with Taylor. Forgetting everything that his mate had told him the day before yesterday, he's already resigned to his next actions: Beating the living daylights out of Taylor, no matter what it would do to his public image. Furthermore, if no one else would put an end to Taylor's cocky, know-it-all, and pompous attitude, Barry would.

But just as Barry's feet tense up to start running, something wondrous happens.

Jonas (A male chipmunk): "Cut the kid some slack, Taylor. You can't be too hard on him after he nearly died two days ago."

Taylor (Rhetorically): "I wasn't speaking to you, was I?!"

Guile: "Actually you were. You were addressing us all."

Chiang (Wu's dad): "And the boy said he was sorry."

Alexandria: "Don't talk back to the Alpha of our community!"

Chloe (A red squirrel who is Anderson's mate): "Hammy's lucky to be breathing. And after an electrocution like that, it's amazing that he can still think and speak."

Barry: "His memory was affected too. And like you said, Taylor, he forgot all the lessons I've taught him before that event."

Halle (Who has climbed down and stands beside her mate): "That's why my mate and I slept in. We spent all night teaching Hammy some of the stuff he forgot. If we'd been up, he never would have accidentally taken other people's food."

Seeing a perfect opportunity to contribute to his brother's defense—and out of guilt for technically causing this predicament in the first place—Sammy speaks up.

Sammy: "I'm the one you should really blame. I told Hammy how to collect food, and all I did was tell my brother that we forage for food. I never told him where we do it from."

Although only five years old, Tammie also feels obliged to help her brother out, even if Taylor doesn't take her words seriously.

Tammie: "My brother Hammy would never steal anything on purpose…Whether he got electrocuted or not.

The community nods in agreement…An outcome Taylor would not allow.

Taylor: "I'm still Alpha, which means all of you MUST listen to ME. If I say this boy stole from us and has to be punished for it, then it's final!"

Ingrid (A young but smart chipmunk girl): "Not if you're no longer the Alpha."

Taylor: "I beg your pardon?"

Ingrid: "There are 1,175 nuts around the Barry family's house. I counted."

Judy: "And whoever has the largest and ripest amount of nuts is the Alpha."

Taylor: "He didn't forage, he stole them!"

Jack: "He found them on his own and brought them to his family's tree. Isn't that what foraging is?"

Taylor suddenly finds himself at a loss of words. Not because he's out of retorts, but because of the fact that everyone is rounding against him all of a sudden. The pause gives enough time for Barry to smile brightly at his fellow neighbors and friends.

Not dwelling on the ecstatic feeling for too long, Barry says something he thought he would never say...Knowing his father, who rests in peace, is very proud of him.

Barry: "I, as Alpha of our community claim that Hammy didn't mean to steal from others and is therefore not to be punished for his unintentional theft. He did it because he didn't know any better as a result of my mate and I being too tired to fill in some gaps my son Sammy left out by accident. I promise all of you this will never happen again. My family and I will spend the rest of the day teaching Hammy how to properly forage, along with other lessons he's forgotten. Since we're all here, the families who Hammy accidentally stole from can go ahead and take your food supplies back."

Taylor: "Aha! Now that my family has our foodstuffs back, we're the Alphas again! And I say—"

Alexandria: "—We'd be more than happy to accept Barry's decree."

Taylor is about to object, but his mate gives him a hug while whispering in his ear, "No one is gonna listen to you if you try to revoke what Barry said. Don't embarrass yourself more than you already have."

Taylor heeds her words, and joins his son in gathering their food back…And resolves to do something about this humiliation another day.

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The next day Hammy, having a much better understanding of how to forage, is helping his family search for food. When he finds a pecan tree, Barry asks Hammy, "Now what do we do before taking the food down?"

Hammy: "We check if anyone else is in the tree, find a place where they aren't working if they are, and gather food from there."

Halle: "Excellent, son."

Hammy zooms up into the tree without warning and knocks down the pecans which fall like rain. However, it's clear only after this that several families had been up in the tree too, and weren't too thrilled that their pecans fell to the ground as a result of the wind Hammy's speed created.

A squirrel: "Hey! We were gonna grab it and carry it down!"

Another squirrel: "You made my four year old son miss his first pecan pluck!"

A third squirrel: "Slow down, will ya!"

A fourth squirrel: "Look what you've done to the tree!"

As it turns out, all the pecans have fallen, leaving none left.

Halle: "Hamilton!"

Hammy: "But I made sure only our nuts, which came from a blank spot, landed near us."

Halle, Barry, Tammie, and Sammy (who is amazed only briefly at hearing his brother being called his trouble-name for the very first time) look at the ground and are spellbound by the sight that confirms Hammy's words. But Halle remembers why she originally addressed her son.

Halle: "But you shook too much down. Remember what we said earlier today: when we forage we only get what we need and leave the rest in the tree for other squirrels to have later on."

A fifth squirrel from above: "And now no one will get any more pecans until spring!"

Barry: "He's superfast, he can't really help it."

The same squirrel: "Blah, blah, blaaah. You can't use your son's accident as an excuse for him being stupid!"

Hammy: "What's stupid mean?"

The same squirrel: "Stupid means you have no intelligence whatsoever, not even a tiny shred, and are not even to be classified as a normal person. Stupid also means you do foolish things without thinking of the impact it'll have on others, and are therefore a bad boy. In other words, stupid means YOU!"

Hammy gasps and a horrible frown comes across his normally cheerful and carefree face.

Hammy (Whimpering from sorrow): "I-I-I'm n-not…s-stupid…Am I?"

He buries his head in his mother's stomach as he cries into her fur.

Halle: "Shhhhh. You're not stupid, Hammy. He said that because he's angry about the tree."

Barry: "Hey fella, you owe my son an apology!"

Squirrel: "For what, telling the truth?"

Barry feels like running up the tree and hitting the guy square in the nose after he said that. But restrains his anger (quite visibly) and responds in words.

Barry: "No. A: for insulting him. B: for valuing a tree more than a child's dignity. And C: You're a grown man and you're picking on a kid, what kind of father does that?"

The squirrel is about to say something else, but his mate grabs him by the shoulder and turns his face toward hers.

The squirrel's mate: "He's right, Larry. You need to be setting a good example for our kids. Go down there and apologize."

Larry: "Alright…" (After climbing down and facing Hammy) "Hey, kid. I'm sorry. I really overreacted about the tree…There's plenty of other trees besides pecans to choose from. But mostly, I shouldn't have called you st—"

Halle: " 'You know what'."

Larry: "Yes, that word. Especially since I need to be a good father for my own kids. And I'd never want someone to call my son and daughter that word either…"

Hammy: "Thank you, sir."

Larry: "You've got a great father, too. Sticking up for you like that makes me think that maybe I should do the same."

Hammy: "Can we hug too?"

Larry: "If that's what you—"

The next thing Larry knew, he is being hugged by Hammy, whose bright smile has returned.

Barry (sarcastically): "I hope you have nothing important to do for the next 10 minutes, 'cuz that's how long he likes to hug people."

Hammy: "I only do that for family, dad."

Halle: "Then let Larry go so he can get back to his own."

Hammy: "Ok."

Sammy: "Help me gather the pecans, Hammy."

Hammy: "On it, other me—I mean, Sammy."

With the conflict resolved Barry's family heads back to their tree, but as they're walking away another squirrel family coming in to forage pecans looks at the sight of the pecan-less tree.

Infant daughter squirrel: "Pecans on ground."

Mother squirrel: "How did this happen?!"

Barry (Whispering to his family): "Quicken pace."

As soon as the words left his mouth, Barry grabs Hammy before the young squirrel could rocket off.

Barry: "But still walk."

Once the family of red squirrels is no longer in eyesight of the ruined pecan tree, Hammy stops and faces his family.

Hammy: "I'm sorry for getting too many pecans out of the tree."

Halle: "Oh, Hammy. You didn't mean to. All of us—your family and the community—just need to get used to your new speed."

Sammy: "I thought it was cool, little brother. You make foraging easy!"

Tammie: "Which leaves more time for playing!"

Hammy: "Yay! I love to play!"

Barry: "And don't let anyone's words get you down, son. They don't understand that you're speed is amazing—no, fantastic."

Halle: "And that makes you our special boy. Just be more careful next time."

Hammy promises, and the family continues to forage for the rest of the day...Without any mishaps.

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By late afternoon, all the squirrels start to count up their forage. Taylor's family has a large amount like usual, 485 new food stuffs. But Barry's family has a whopping 2,000 new food to add to their stash which, to everyone's amazement, is higher than the Taylor's.

Jack: "You know this means!" (Loudly) "Ladies and gentlerodents, Barry's family is now the new Alphas of our community!"

Everyone but the Taylors cheer. Noticing this, Barry walks over to Taylor, with a smug smile on his own face and gets ready to rub it in.

Barry thinking: "Oh yeah! I've been waiting to say this to Taylor since the first day his family became the Alphas. I'm gonna enjoy this!" (Out loud): "Hey Taylor, I—"

It happens in one second, but the impact is profound. Barry remembers the talk he had with Larry today and suddenly realizes that if he insults Taylor, he would turn into the guy. All that talk about being a good father and setting a good example for his kids required him to be himself. And what better way to demonstrate than to fulfill his own phrase that he wants all his kids—but Hammy in particular—to learn from: Actions speak louder than words or smarts.

Barry: "—want you to know that I forgive you for all the arguments and insults we've exchanged over the years and won't hold it against you as Alpha. It's water under the bridge." (Thinking) "I don't deny that words and smarts are still important."

Taylor: "I…um...Thanks, Barry."

Barry extends his paw and Taylor does the same. The two feuding enemies finally shake paws.

Taylor: "Congrats. If you need any advice on how to be an Alpha, just let me know."

Barry: "I appreciate it, but I always find the best way to learn is through experience. But I'll give ya a holler if I do need help…Wanna stay and socialize?"

Taylor: "I appreciate your offer, but I think my mate and son will spend some quality time together for the rest of the evening."

Barry: "Ok. See ya around!"

Taylor: "And I promise a truce. I won't insult you or your family ever again, because the better man and family has earned the prize of being Alpha."

Barry: "Wow…Thank you, Taylor!"

Taylor (Giving a thumb's up): "You're welcome, Barry."

The Taylors bid their farewells and then head home.

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Inside the Taylor family's tree

Alexandria (sarcastically): Well that went well."

Mikey: "I can't believe you sold out like that without a fight, dad."

Taylor: "Oh did I?"

Taylor points down to his toes which are crossed.

Taylor: "My little piggies were like this before I said those" (ridiculing) " 'wonderful' things to Barry."

Mikey: "Alright, dad!"

Mikey high fours his father, who then looks up at his mate.

Alexandria: "I knew you weren't weak. If any of that you said to Barry was true, I would leave you."

Mikey's smile instantly drops at his mother's chilling words. Even more chilling was what came out of his father's mouth next.

Taylor: "And if you did that, I would hurt you. But you are mates with a strong squirrel."

Alexandria (While turning to face Mikey): "And we have a strong son too, don't we?"

Mikey quickly overcomes his shock and grins—hoping he was fast enough for his parents not to see that change in his facial expressions.

Taylor: "This is a sad, sad day…Ah, what am saying," (yelling) "it's downright horrible! We've lost our standing as Alphas to a family of idiots!" (Takes a breath and speaks in a depressed voice) "My mother would be so ashamed of me…" (After a brief pause, he scoffs and speaks in a resentful tone) "Talk about luck. That electrocution only made things better for Barry's family. And I'm certain he's not gonna act like an Alpha while he's in charge. He didn't even ask for my advice which would have knocked five points off his weakling-rating. He'll be too goody-goody instead of assertive and vigilant. And what's worse: the community will like him because of it. It's going to be very difficult for us to regain our rightful place as Alphas without upsetting the community."

Alexandria: "Don't worry Taylor, there are…other ways to get back at them for this humiliation."

Both squirrels grin at each other and enter a big hug while kissing.

Taylor: "This is why I married you, Alex. You're just as crafty and underhanded as me."

Alexandria: "And I know we've passed those genes onto our son too."

Fearing his parents would belittle him if he didn't show more of what they termed as "strength," Mikey speaks up.

Mikey: "You have, mom and dad."

Taylor: "What do you mean, Mikey?"

Mikey: "Austin and his family were in the pecan tree today. He told me how a guy named Larry insulted Hammy, and it really got to Barry. If Larry hadn't apologized, Barry would've hit the guy."

Taylor: "That does sound like Barry. And your thinking is brilliant! What better way to make Barry's family fall from the Alpha position than by ruining his goody-goody nature! I leave that task to you, my son."

Mikey (Dumbfounded): "Me?"

Taylor: "Who else? It's your plan. Besides, you're 16, it's time to prove that you're a Taylor on your own." (Faking innocence) "If you're not up to it, then you won't be a true Taylor and your mother and I can always have another kid to teach how to succeed where you failed."

Mikey: "No worries, dad. I wasn't nervous; just surprised that you think I'm ready to prove myself. And I will!"

Alexandria (walks over to kiss Mikey): "That's our boy! And you know your father was only kidding. We would never have another child to replace you if you failed."

Mikey: "I know. And I know because you both love me."

Taylor: "Love family, but no one else, Mikey. That's what my father taught me, and his father before him, and so on."

Mikey: "Yes sir."

Alexandria: "Now run along to bed. You've got a busy schedule ahead of you starting tomorrow."

Mikey nods and heads to his room; a separate section of the "living room" area where he came from and across from where his parents' room was. (Being far more prestigious than most squirrel families, the Taylor's had more living space in their home)

Once their son is away, Alexandria address her mate.

Alexandria: "Y'know, if you wanna be on the safe side and have another kid just in case Mikey lets us down, we can."

Taylor: "You told him I was kidding."

Alexandria's responds with a wink, a smile, and showing Taylor her two crossed fingers.

Taylor chuckles, Alexandria follows him suite, and then the two escalate into laughing out loud like a pair of super villains.

Mikey's voice: "What's so funny, mom and dad?"

Alexandria: "You're dad just told a good joke, sweetie."

Taylor: "I'll tell it to you in the morning, son. Goodnight."

Mikey's voice: " 'Night."

Taylor and Alexandria continue laughing—now in a whisper. Not as diabolical, but it sufficed.

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Note: I've been quite the lazy one ever since finishing up with my semester on December 8, but I'm keeping my tradition of updating a story as an early Holiday's present for all you readers. And as fate would have it, it's Christmas Eve, 2015 by the time of this chapter's posting, and like Santa I'm working overtime!

I hope this chapter was a worthy pay-off. And if not, the updates for all future stories' will be even better, that I promise. Until that happens, Seasons' Greetings and I'll see ya later!