Imaginary Creatures Learn: Never Mess with the Compass Girls!
Keeping Tabs Weekly, Summer 2023
The Trail & Compass Girls Troop 57 had an unusual experience earlier this month: the band of twenty-four girls was attacked by supernatural nocturnal creatures while testing for their nighttime tracking ribbons in Freetown State Forest in Massachusetts.
Sasha Good, 11, of Middleborough described a handful of humanoid beings that emerged from the river side of their troop’s base and began throwing pinecones at the girls. These creatures, each no more than two feet tall, according to Good and three other girls in the troop who saw them, had porcupine-like spikes on their backs and sharp facial features.
“And they were almost naked,” Good said with evident disgust.
“Oh, they were pukwudgies,” said Bridget Baines, 10, a fifth grader of Wareham. “I saw them before in a book last year during the Reading and Writing Fair. Pukwudgies are very territory-ist [sic].”
Good and Baines each confirmed that the entire troop retaliated by hurling Trail & Compass Girl Nature Bars at the aggressive pukwudgies. While most of the girls said they saw nothing in the forest, Good and Baines were able to direct their counterattacks to success, forcing the pukwudgies to retreat. The Banana Crunch Bars, both girls agreed, distracted the creatures the most.
“I think it’s probably because they’ve never had bananas before,” Baines speculated. “I don’t like bananas all that much, but I think pukwudgies do now.”
Helen Baxter, the troop’s leader, said neither she nor any of the other adult supervisors witnessed the alleged attack by the mysterious creatures, though they ultimately regrouped the members of the troop, who had scattered during the melee. Baxter believes there’s a simpler explanation for what occurred rather than strange hostile monsters in the forest.
