This is the home of a wizard; well, it was before he blew it up anyway. You see, wizards aren’t born knowing everything. They have to learn just like the rest of us. This particular wizard happened to be a recent graduate from Wizard Tech. He had excellent grades in spell rhyming but just barely squeaked by in chemical transformations. In fact, I happen to know he only passed because a squirrel friend of his managed to sneak in and get a look at the test beforehand.

Now, Chemical transformation is an essential skill for wizards. You can’t turn a prince into a frog without it. So our young friend hid in this hollow tree to work through the rough spots left in his training. He successfully transformed water into orange soda, a rock into a chocolate bar, and a leaf into a ham sandwich. Pleased with his achievements, he decided to try something a little more complicated, but what? As he ate the sandwich and drank the soda, he noticed acorns littering the ground all around him. Why not turn them into mice, he thought.

Without hesitation, he piled them right in the center of the tree and whipped up a spell:

Acorns no longer will you be

come to life and let me see

Ears and tummies nice and round

Transform into mice, the biggest in town!

As soon as he spoke, he realized his mistake.

The acorns began to rumble. The acorns started to quiver. Like giant popcorns, they exploded into enormous mice. All that popping made the tree more and more cramped. The wizard soon was squished between the end of one mouse and the beginning of another. Whiskers tickled his legs, and feet smashed against his nose. Just as he was resigning himself to the fact he would suffocate under an exceptionally wide backside, the popping stopped. Our wizard struggled to escape from his compromising position then breathed a loud sigh of relief. But there was no time to rest; he had to get to the door and into the open air.

Just as he reached for the knob, he saw one last unpopped acorn. The acorn began to rumble. The acorn started to quiver. With a thunderous bang, it exploded into the largest, fattest mouse that ever a wizard created. In fact, the force of the explosion was so strong it discombobulated the magic. Like a volcano spewing forth lava, mouse-colored furry acorns blasted through the side of the tree.

And the wizard? No one knows what happened to him. Some say he too exploded, others that he was trapped inside an acorn. Yet I wonder. There is a bagger at the grocery store that bears an odd resemblance to our wizard. And didn’t he flinch when he carried my groceries past an oak tree? And perhaps it was my imagination, but I could have sworn I saw a little tail sticking out from the back of his jacket.