A Scoutmaster's Blog

If you follow The Buckets comic strip you know that the youngest member of the household, Eddie, is a Cub Scout, and his father is a Pack leader. A few times a year Greg Cravens, the creator of the strip, uses his comic to share a humorous look at the world of Cub Scouting. Mr. Cravens obvious knows a little about the Scouting program because his comics can hit very close to home. I am sure many Pack Leaders and families can identify with the situations he shares with us. ( I sometimes wonder if Mr. Cravens is not a Cub Scout leader in his community.)

Mr. Cravens recently featured a weeklong series in which the Cub Scout Pack goes on a camping trip. If you have ever taken Scouts on a camping trip I am sure you will find these hitting the mark. Here is a quick rundown of the comic strips and the links:

A trip is announced / A pocket knife is needed: Click HERE.
The first rule of camping: Click HERE.
My last dry clothes: Click HERE.
How to gather the Scouts: Click HERE.
Texting while hiking: Click HERE.
A tick is on me! : Click HERE.

While these comic strips feature Cub Scout age boys, many of them could also apply to Boy Scout age youth. Enjoy.

Yes, I realize that it is still July, but it is time to go toward your nearest Hallmark store and buy this year’s Snoopy, the Beagle Scout, Christmas ornament. It features Beagle Scout Snoopy along with a couple of his bird Scouts as they try to sell Christmas trees. Hallmark has named it “Holiday En-tree-preneurs”. It can be seen by clicking HERE, but who knows how long the link will be available. Or, for that matter, how long will they be in the stores? Keep in mind that these ornaments are available only in the stores, not through online sales.

I have been collecting these ornaments for several years now and always buy two of them, one for the tree and one to store away. Too bad the BSA does not list these in the Scout Stuff store during the holiday shopping season.

Every so often I get a note from someone asking me about the Peanuts comic strip in which Snoopy appears as a Beagle Scout or as the scoutmaster of a troop of Woodstock’s friends. I never had a collection of all the comic strips, but today I found a couple of sources that will help you to find them all.

The first is http://peanuts.wikia.com, a site that answers all your questions about Charlie Brown and his gang. It is where I started looking for the comics featuring Snoopy, the Beagle Scout. (Who, by the way, started his Scouting as a Tenderpaw.)

The second site you will need is comics.com. I will save you the trouble of looking for the first strip and give you the address. http://comics.com/peanuts/1974-05-13/

Between these two sites I was able to find over 35 strips dealing with the Beagle Scout and his troop. In one of the last strips he attends a wedding of a couple of the troop members and becomes the groom’s First Beagle. Have fun reading through them all.

I could not pass up sharing this comic with you. It is a Family Circus comic and asks a very important question about the Boy Scout Slogan, Do A Good Turn Daily. I actually saw it in a newspaper over a year ago, but only recently found an online version of it, and it is in color!