✨ The Nut Chronicles: Tales of Thimblegruff & Pibbinook ✨ Part 1

The Nut Chronicles, Part I: The Great Gathering

as recounted in the journal of Tharnwick the Frog

It began, as many catastrophes do, with ambition.

Thimblegruff and Pibbinook were no ordinary squirrels. No, they were entrepreneurs. Visionaries. Tycoons of treefruit. In fact, they were the founding (and only) members of the Acorn Acquisition & Storage Society for Squirrel Excellence & Advanced Planning—a name far too long to fit on the miniature leaf badge they wore, but that didn’t stop them from trying.

Thimblegruff, stately and serious, carried a notebook bound in bark. He fancied himself an academic of nutkind, prone to dramatic statements like, “This cobnut is from the South Knoll—I can tell by its emotional density.” Pibbinook, meanwhile, was more spark than squirrel: a frizzle-tailed blur who once forgot where he hid a week’s worth of almonds and ended up accidentally founding a chipmunk monastery.

They made a perfect pair.

It was during a routine scouting mission (i.e., flinging themselves from branch to branch shouting “Nutfinder’s Ho!”) that they stumbled upon it—a grove so lush, so bursting with promise, that they stopped mid-chatter and just stared. An unmarked thicket of twisting boughs and mossy roots, untouched by fairy footprints or frogfolk charts. Whisperroot Grove.

The legend claimed this glade revealed itself only to those with pure intentions or extremely chaotic energy. Pibbinook, bless him, qualified on both counts.

They wasted no time.

Acorns were gathered. Hazelnuts hoisted. Beech nuts bartered from the local beetles. There was a wheelbarrow made of snail shells. A pulley system involving vines and the tragic demise of one brave thistle. Pibbinook insisted on sorting the hoard into categories such as “Roundish,” “Spicy Vibe,” and “Definitely Magical, Probably Dangerous.”

By week’s end, their cache was a towering monument of squirrel glory, crowned with a single golden nut that glowed faintly at night. Thimblegruff called it “The Kernel of Destiny.” Pibbinook licked it.

Unfortunately, the grove was no longer quiet.

First came the magpies—suspiciously polite, and far too interested in inventory. Then a delegation of gnomes from the Bureau of Autumnal Balances arrived to ask about “nut taxation thresholds.” By the time the dryad council sent a polite cease-and-desist scroll tied to a flying mushroom, Thimblegruff was already drafting blueprints for a second hoard annex. Pibbinook had declared himself “Nut King, Tuesdays Only” and was wearing a hat made from a walnut shell and some ribbon he found in the trash.

It was glorious. It was chaotic. It was inevitable.

But something else was stirring. Something old. Something… rumbly.

You see, not all nuts should be gathered. And the Kernel of Destiny? It was not meant to be hoarded.

More on that in Part II: The Nut That Roared.

 

✨ Want to own a piece of the tale?
The legendary duo now lives on in silver-toned splendor. Claim your pair of Thimblegruff & Pibbinook earrings here. Perfect for mischief-makers, nut-hoarders, or anyone who believes squirrels might be smarter than they let on.

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