Tell your favorite story

This is an ancient tale I made up a few days ago for a precocious little girl in my family. I found this cool looking stick, worked it a bit and a story was born. I'd like her to pass the stick and story to her grandkids.

When the Creator had finished his 6 days of making the world and everything in it, He wanted to rest on the Seventh Day. As He turned to go to His place of rest He spied a seed on the ground. With His mighty finger he pushed that seed into the ground.
Mother Earth wrapped herself around the see and Father Sun warmed the soil. Before long that seed sprouted into a cedar tree, the first cedar.
Many years ago passed. The cedar grew very big and very wise. Birds and animals built their nests in her branches. Insects, both flying and crawling, made their homes in her bosom.
Fleas lived with Mother Cedar, as she came to be known. They infested the nests and occupants biting and crawling around on them. After much protesting, Mother Cedar asked the fleas to quit biting the creatures within her boughs. The fleas kept on with their biting, ignoring her.
Mother Cedar got angry at the fleas and told them to stop. Again they ignored her, so she banished the fleas to live in the dirt. To this day fleas hate cedar so much that they won't go near it.
A group of people came and built a village nearby. They cleared some land and planted crops. They built fences and raised livestock. Their life was simple and good.
The people found Mother Cedar and knew she was something very special.
They cleared away the bushes and scrub under her. They pulled the vines from her branches. They removed the dead branches and laid them in a pile for the termites.
At that time termites lived on the land and dead cedar was their favorite food. The pile of cedar would last them a long time.
At the bottom of Mother Cedar, where she entered Mother Earth, the people placed a large, flat rock. They called it the Question Stone. One would stand on the Stone, wrap their arms around her trunk as far as they could and ask their question.
Now, trees don't talk, but Mother Cedar could let them know the answer like they thought of it themselves. She would answer questions about when to plant or when to harvest, when to hunt and fish, when to stay home and when to venture out.
One day a little girl of no more than three summers crawled up on the Question Stone, wrapped her arms around Mother Cedar's trunk and asked, "Mother Cedar, how deep do your roots go?"
Mother Cedar had never thought about that. She just knew that her roots were buried snugly with Mother Earth. The little girl then wondered, "How deep can your roots go?"
Mother Cedar didn't know the answer to that question either but she could find out. She turned to Father Sun for his warmth to gain her strength.  Her tap root was the deepest, so she sent all her power to the tap root and it plunged deep into Mother Earth.
Deeper and deeper it went, straight down. The little girl, Bahrena, smiling and happy that Mother Cedar was doing this for her.
Mother Cedar felt the joy in Bahrena's heart and wanted to go as deep as she possibly could. She pushed deeper into the earth, deeper than anything had ever gone before.
Lurking deep in Mother Earth was an evil. It had been waiting a very long time to be free from the depths of the earth. It couldn't survive Father Sun's warmth or brightness. When it got to the surface it would have to only come out at night.
The evil watched Mother Cedar's tap get closer and plotted a plan. It would wait until it could grab the tip of the root and slowly corrupt it's way to the surface where it could dispense with the carnage for being thrown into a lake of fire.
Deeper Mother Cedar plunged until that moment evil grabbed the tip of the root. Her anguish was felt by Bahrena and the little girl knew the ancient cedar was in trouble.
The evil had a firm grip on the tap root and Mother Cedar pulled on it to get it out of the evil. What once was a straight taproot began to twist and gnarl up to get away from the evil, but it was no use.
Mother Cedar knew that this evil could not reach the surface. It could not be unleashed on the world. She told the termites to dig down and eat through the root to cut the evil free. They were scared and would not go. In anger,
she banished them from her sight making them live in the earth and to this day termites won't eat cedar.
She shook her mighty limbs to free herself from the earth. The Rain soaked the ground around her feet and the Winds answered the call. They called up the strongest of winds and slowly, very slowly Mother Cedar began to fall. Her roots were pulled from the ground. She sent all her power down the taproot to help fend off the evil. If she could get the evil up when it had such a small grip on the root Father Sun could force the evil back into the ground.
As Mother Cedar fell she used the last of her strength to pull the taproot free from the ground. She pointed it straight to Father Sun. He burned the evil terribly, but she was dying. The Beavers jumped on and chewed through the last bit of root to keep the evil out of Mother Cedar. Out of shame for having to do this, they swore to never eat cedar again and to this day a beaver won't eat a cedar tree unless it's starving.
Many years passed. Bahrena grew up and had children of her own.  Her children had children and she told this story to them all. She had kept that last gnarly bit of taproot as a wand because it had power, Mother Cedar's power.
Every spring Bahrena would touch the wand to the earth for a bountiful harvest. She would touch the wand to the trees for the success of the hunters.
She passed this wand down the generations and the power within is still as potent as the first day. One can still see the bite marks of the beavers teeth when they chewed it off Mother Cedar and see the burn mark where evil was defeated.

This is a story by Sir Alfred Payson Terhune which I found in a book called, The Best Bird Stories I Know. These stories were compiled by Jean Clair Minot. I especially love the way it was written. This is my rendition of my favorite story and I have taken some artistic license with it because it's been many years since I read it.    
How's Zat?
 A couple sat on their veranda one morning, somewhere near the New Jersey coast, and suddenly began to hear a mass of crows squawking and flapping in a nearby tree.    
Their three collies leapt up and the woman realized this group was attacking one of its own. She grabbed her table napkin and ran, waving it at the crazed birds. They swarmed off and left a single bird, sitting back on his pinion feathers, bleeding and eyes bleary. As they stood looking at the bedraggled crow, an incomprehensible thing happened. The bird looked up at them and yelled, "Well, well, well, how's Zat?!"
    The dogs shrank back in fear but were wary and prepared to protect their mistress from this hellish bird that spoke like a man. She gently scooped up the bird and took it into the house. It slept in a cardboard box for a day and a half. "Sleep is nature's way of healing but only the animals seemed to avail themselves of it."
  After that, Zat went on many adventures. Grabbing the workman's new watch and smashing it to bits on a rock, dumping paint off a ladder, causing the painter to shout obscenities, and touring the extensive grounds riding on the rear haunch of Sunnybank Lad, the oldest and most favored of the master's Collies.
The master was disgusted by the antics of this encroacher and would just as soon make it disappear. Then one day,  Lad failed to return for supper.        
  That same night, Cook set out a lovely piece of beef on the balcony and had just finished slicing it into thin strips for a special meal when, inside, a pot was boiling over and cook ran to remove it from the stove. When she returned, she saw Zat flying away with the last few pieces in his beak. Now the master had two things to worry about!
  The next afternoon when Lad had still not returned, the master and the entire household made a full search of the property and every roadside ditch where they feared they would find the dog, killed by some careless driver of those darn newfangled motorcars!
  The theft of the beef and Cook's ensuing rant was too much. The next morning, the master took his shotgun and was going to remove the problem but decided to make one more effort to find his beloved Collie.
  After an hour of hikng, he saw a large murder of crows swooping and diving not far ahead of him. He knew something was probably dead and prayed it wasn't his loyal dog. When he got close, he saw Lad lying motionless and fired at the raucous crew in an effort to disperse them. 5 or 6 fell dead at his feet.
  Upon closer inspection, the master realized Lad was conscious but barely alive. It seemed he had chased a rabbit through the heavy underbrush and a long forgotten wolf trap had been set off as the rabbit passed, catching Lad in the cheek and jaw, in essence, gagging him and keeping him from answering the nearby calls of his master the day before. In front of Lad's face sat the strips of beef stolen from Cook. Lad could not open his mouth to eat them. The master, happy but fearful, loosed Lad from the bars that held him and then headed to the steam to fill his hat with water for Lad. One of the crows flapped his wing and the master instinctively shot him. Then another moved and, as the master reloaded, Lad lifted himself up and onto the second bird. The telltale paint on the birds wing told him it was Zat. Zat, whom he had almost killed, had tried to save his animal pal. As the master placed Lad's head in his lap, Zat sat back drunkenly on his feathers, and gurgled, "Well, well, well, how's Zat!"
   

Hubbie spins yarns about the "Mexican Cowboys" for our kids. My favorite one is short:

Buffalo wings were originally made from a special breed of buffalo that could fly. But as the White Man pressed further west into the country, they  realized what a delicacy these rare creatures were. Though the Mexican Cowboys tried their best to teach the White Man herd management, the magnificent, rare, Flying Buffalo became extinct.

Missing the special treat that those tasty buffalo's wings were, the White Man needed to come up with a replacement snack. Covering chicken wings with a spicy sauce came somewhat close to the beloved buffalo, so it was decided they'd be made from chicken henceforth. But the name Buffalo Wings stuck as a reminder to always, always practice herd management.