Filbert was drawing his usual crowd of interested animals near the bottom of his home tree.
“Do that back flip again Fil!” Reggie the Robin said.
“Sure!” responded Filbert and performed the highest back flip he’d ever done. His bushy tail didn’t even touch the ground his flip was so high.
“Wow!” That one was the best one ever!” exclaimed the red bellied woodpecker.
Then Filbert told a few jokes about humans and all the animal audience laughed. Just as “Fil” was ready to deliver his last punch line, a tall man walked over from the flagstone path and said…”Filbert Squirrel….may I speak to you Sir?”
All the birds and chipmunks scurried away to safer areas of the garden but Filbert was sort of blocked from his tree by the intruding well dressed stranger.
“Ah…what….do you want?”asked Filbert , the tremble in his voice giving away his instinctive fear of humans.
“Oh I’m not here to hurt you….in fact…well …I’m here to make you famous!”
Then the man reached into his jacket and Filbert quickly and fearfully looked around for a path of escape to safety.
“Here….it’s a contract. We want you to star in a full length feature movie and….there’ll be guest appearances on TV shows and a tour around the country to promote the movie and….”
“WAIT! Are you serious or is this one of the Mr. Johnson the squirrel hater’s mean tricks?”
“No…Mr. Filbert I assure you this is a bona fide offer of….well…stardom!”
“I….don’t know about this. I would be entertaining who?”
“Ah…humans of course…they’re the only ones with money Mr. Filbert. You would be joining a full lineup of star animals….ducks, mice, dogs, birds, even elephants….well….I could go on. But you see we don’t have a squirrel in our pool of stars and you would be PERFECT! What do you say?” The man reached down and handed the contract to Filbert.
Filbert couldn’t read of course but the paper did look very important with gold seals and signatures and then he saw it, at the very top…that unmistakable logo….”DISNEY”.
“Just put your front right paw onto this ink pad and then onto this spot on the contract Mr. Filbert Sir.”
And just as Fil touched his paw to the black pad something very sad happened………..

……….he woke up!