She was an ominous, mythological creature, sometimes mentioned by the scouts in the deep Catskill woods where I’d taken them for a two-week stay as part of the program I ran for the troop. She existed only there, and that’s why one of the Tenderfeet asked me to call up his parents to take him home. She had reportedly, according to the boys’ stories, killed some scouts in the woods, and the Tenderfoot or new scout told me she shook his platform tent at night. An inspection of his tent showed a thin string leading from the top of his tent pole to a tree and back to the tent of one of the older, Star scouts. I had a serious talk with that scout, and the problem was solved.
I could have been a proselytizer, but I was head of a multi-faith troop, and that was out of the question. I couldn’t tell them of another lady, known to millions as Our Lady, who was almost mythological too, but who had existed about 2,000 years ago as the mother of the man who influenced Western Civilization more than any other man in history.
Civilization 