A Cow in the Tree

If you grew up in a church, you most likely had some stories from your youth group days. Michael and I laugh now when we see teenagers trying to impress each other by doing silly things. We were there once too, though we try to deny it. 

My youth group went away at least once a year on a long weekend retreat. My brother and I always tried to find ways to make the event interesting. Well, he did anyway. I just wanted in on whatever he did. 

Since it was a couple nights of camping, we made sure we were equipped with the important essentials: silly string and shaving cream. 

Everyone was in their tents and sound asleep. The leaders slept in pop-up trailers on the other side of the lot from the tents. We laid there as still as we could for as long as we could. When we felt it was safe, we came out of our tents and let the fun and/or destruction begin. 

We pulled a couple tent pegs, silly stringed tents, shaving cream in shoes. Then we got a little more ambitious and headed over to the leaders’ quarters. 

It was really dark that night. We avoided flashlights so that we wouldn’t give ourselves away. As we were approaching the leaders’ campers, suddenly we were under attack! Wait, what?!? How do I have silly string on me? What is going on? I looked up, and to my confused surprise, found a cow attacking me from the tree! 

My Mom somehow found a cow costume at the retreat we were at. It had plastic utters and everything. She had managed to climb up into the tree and wait us out. I don’t know how long she was up there, or how we didn’t see it, but kudos to the momma bear’s stealth mode. 

We all had a good laugh that night. None of the other campers were aware what had happened until morning. 

A couple of them woke up fairly early the next day. They walked around and saw the “damage” to everything. When some of the leaders woke, the kids shared their absolute frustration. They were not “happy campers”!

Sure, the kids were upset about the silly string and shaving cream. But when the leaders looked around, they discovered why. Garbage had been strewn everywhere. They explained to the other kids that wasn’t from us. 

It looked like the raccoons saw how much fun we were having that night and decided to join the party! They had gotten into the garbage and made quite the mess. 

So, between the leaders and the raccoons that night, the joke seemed to be on us. It was still good fun and totally worth it. When we were cleaning up, we realized something odd. We questioned the leaders after. Did they actually bring silly string with them??

Nope! They had caught wind of what we were up to and raided some of our stash when we were off doing an activity. We didn’t even notice. Good on them. Moral of the story to all the youth out there. Be careful what fun you have planned. It might come back at you.