We have two girls involved in scouts. Our youngest daughter is a real green-sashed Girl Scout. Her older sister attends an alternative girl scout-type thingy on Saturday afternoons. The Girl Scouts have better cookies.

During the last weeks of winter, every winter, our youngest daughter sells Girl Scout cookies. She painstakingly records her family and friends’ cookie orders in girlish script on a slick, four-color preprinted form. A gaggle of giggling girls might staff a folding table at the grocery store on Saturdays. My wife Maria might post something clever on Facebook. Helpfully, I might eat several boxes of cookies.

This year Maria became a kingpin. We had half of the den stacked four feet high with cases of Thin Mints, Do-si-dos, Rah-Rah Raisins, Tagalongs. Eventually, the whole family joined her organization. Mom, Dad, kids, even the family dog.

After our shipment came in, there was a steady stream of visitors, often at odd hours. They usually left their motors running, trotting nervously to our door and furtively handing over crumpled Jacksons, Franklins, personal checks, bags of laundry quarters.

A dimply minion in plushy bear-head pillow slippers, or her oldest brother with the remote still in his hand, or sometimes Mrs. Kingpin herself might greet the visitor with a curt nod, disappear into the den, and reappear with a white plastic sack of Samoas, Trefoils, Savannah Smiles.

Some women bought 12, 16, 19 boxes “for their families.” One woman claimed she needed 24 boxes of Thin Mints because she had several teenagers in the home.

I love Thin Mints. But they don’t work.

Often the habitués could be seen ripping open the packages on their way down the driveway. Some unfortunates couldn’t wait for the car and crouched behind the bushes. Our backyard turned into a chewing gallery.

This year, internecine competition for sales prizes is intense, both around Puget Sound and apparently, across the country. Never mind moms bringing order forms to work with them, or calling grandma to help sell a half-dozen boxes to her buddies in the old folks’ home. One troop, probably somewhere in Kansas or Oklahoma, took it to the next level entirely, engaging Tom Hanks to sell their Girl Scout cookies.

Two weeks ago, it was reported that members of the Vashon Girl Scout troop tried to commandeer the corner in front of The Hardware Store Restaurant, while the high school journalism class manned bake sale tables on that same corner. Both groups reportedly told the other to get off their corner.

At the same time, a competing group of girls worked the northeast corner, in front of Nirvana. Inexplicably, someone had set up a stair machine on the southeast corner in front of the flower shop, and a shapely woman in yoga pants was demonstrating to the old guys idling at the four-way stop exactly how a stair machine works.

The rival girl-gangs peppered the vehicle traffic with shrill cross-fire, flashing three-fingered Scout signs and shouting “Four dollars a box — no refunds!” and “They’re not nutritious, they’re delicious!”

A few days later, a late-model minivan pulled into our driveway. While the family dog barked in maximum red alert, a bearded stranger sat behind the wheel and spoke through a four-inch gap in the driver’s side window. He called himself “Duke.” He was apparently some sort of lieutenant in Maria’s operation.

While the dog grumbled on the porch, he asked in a hushed voice if I was his connection. He had just closed up an open-air cookie market near the cart park at the grocery store and had instructions from a captain in the organization to deliver the cash, green hand-Sharpied signs and the unsold product back to the kingpin’s crib. His small children watched wide-eyed, still strapped in their car seats, as the mule and I unloaded thick, rubber-banded stacks of cash and two dozen half-empty cases of cookies from the back of his Caravan.

By the time this column hits print, sales of Girl Scout cookies in Western Washington will be over. If you haven’t scored yet, or have a sincere, teeth-chattering Thin Mints jones, don’t come here. We’re no longer holding. And probably under some kind of surveillance.

At least one organization in Tri-Cities is still dealing. And in the southern U.S., Girl Scouts are hosting an ice-and-snow-delayed cookie sale throughout the mid-South starting April 4, or September or something. I’m sorry, man. That’s the best I can do.

— Kevin Pottinger lives with his wife and four children on Vashon.