There was once a young squirrel called Nutty, who lived in a wooden house high up in a tree in the middle of a forest. The forest where Nutty the squirrel lived was a beautiful place; it was full of plants, trees and bushes of all sizes. All of this beautiful vegetation was possible thanks to the river that burbled through the area and filled the place with life. For as Nutty the squirrel well knew, water is life.

One day, when Nutty was resting in his tree house, he heard some shouts coming from inside the forest. So he scrambled out to have a look around…

Nutty leapt from tree to tree to reach the place the shouts were coming from as quick as he could. When he arrived, he found a group of people lighting a fire on the ground for a barbecue.

The poor squirrel was very frightened, for he knew that today – the first day of summer – people weren’t allowed to light fires in the forest because of the danger of starting a huge blaze.

Not wasting a second, he raced to the home of the forest ranger to try to warn him somehow that the forest was in danger. When Nutty arrived at the hut, the ranger was fast asleep. Nutty crept in through a little hole in the ground and turned on the TV that showed a group of people making a fire in the forest through the security camera. As he left the hut, Nutty threw a pen lid on the ground to wake the ranger up so that he could see what was happening. Well, the trick worked and the ranger immediately noticed that the TV was on and that people were lighting a fire in the middle of the forest. So he raced out to his car without a moment to lose.

Peeping around the corner to make sure his plan had worked, Nutty the squirrel then leapt onto the back of the forest ranger’s jeep. In no time at all, the ranger had reached the place where the people were making fire and barely had he got out of the car than he cried: “What are you doing?! Don’t you know you can’t light a fire here in summer because it’s so dangerous?” One of the people answered: “No, we didn’t know.” “But why is it dangerous to light a fire in summer?” asked another.

“Because if we don’t put out our fire properly in summer, the high temperatures and lack of rain could reignite it and create a really, really serious forest fire,” he replied.

And that was how Nutty the squirrel helped stop the forest being burned to the ground. And the other people also learned how dangerous it is to light a fire in the forest in summer, and that there are much more suitable places for a barbecue.

THE END