The Squirrel: A Furry Question Mark of Gray

Curious squirrel at Green Lake

I love how poets describe the squirrel — “a furry question-mark of gray,” “a piece of perpetual motion,” or “the curliest thing.”  Enjoy these squirrel-themed poems!

The Squirrel
by Frances Stacy Keely

As quick as fire, as light as flame
His movements lick the ground;
He seems epitome of life,
The verve of life around.
A furry question-mark of gray
He makes upon a tree;
As quick as an electric sign,
Reverse, tail down, is he.
His movements tingle in my mind;
I feel his furry prance,
A spiritual activity,
Soul wrong side out a-dance.

 

The Ground Squirrel
by Paul Hamilton Hayne

Bless us, and save us! What’s here?
Pop!
At a bound,
A tiny brown creature, grotesque in his grace,
Is sitting before us, and washing his face
With his little fat paws overlapping;
Where does he hail from? Where?
Why, there,
Underground,
From a nook just as cosy,
And tranquil, and dozy,
As e’er wooed to sybarite napping
(But none ever caught him a-napping).
“Don’t you see his soft burrow so quaint, lad! and queer?”
Gone! like the flash of a gun!
This oddest of chaps,
Mercurial,
Disappears
Head and ears!
Then, sly as a fox,
Swift as Jack in his box,
Pops up boldly again!
What does he mean by this frisking about,
Now up and now down, and now in and now out,
And all done quicker than winking?
What does it mean? Why, ’tis plain, fun!
Only fun! or, perhaps,
The pert little rascal’s been drinking?
There’s a cider press yonder all day on the run!
Capture him! no, we won’t do it,
Or, be sure in due time we would rue it!
Such a piece of perpetual motion,
Full of bother
And pother,
Would make paralytic old Bridget
A fidget.
So you see (to my notion),
Better leave our downy
Diminutive browny
Alone near his “diggings”;
Ever free to pursue,
Rush round, and renew
His loved vaulting
Unhalting,
His whirling,
And curling,
And twirling,
And swirling,
And his ways, on the whole,
So unsteady!
‘Pon my soul,
Having gazed
Quite amazed,
On each wonderful antic
And summersault frantic,
For just a bare minute,
My head, it feels whizzing;
My eyesight’s grown dizzy;
And both legs, unstable
As a ghost’s tipping table,
Seem waltzing, already!
Capture him! no, we won’t do it,
Or in less than no time, how we’d rue it!

 

The Curliest Thing
from The Book of a Thousand Poems, ed. J. Murray MacBain

 The squirrel is the curliest thing
I think I ever saw;
He curls his back, he curls his tail,
He curls each little paw,
He curls his little vest so white,
His little coat so grey —
He is the most curled-up wee soul
Out in the woods at play!