Squirrel

A grey squirrel.

Squirrels are rodents belonging to the family Sciuridae. They are indigenous to Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas and were privately introduced to Australia in the 19th century.

Quotes

• ... One day my dog treed a red squirrel in a tall hickory that stood in a meadow on the side of a steep hill. To see what the squirrel would do when closely pressed, I climbed the tree. As I drew near he took refuge in the topmost branch, and then, as I came on, he boldly leaped into the air, spread himself out upon it, and, with a quick, tremulous motion of his tail and legs, descended quite slowly and landed upon the ground thirty feet below me, apparently none the worse for the leap, for he ran with great speed and eluding the dog took refuge in another tree.
  • John Burroughs, Squirrels and Other Fur-bearers. Houghton, Mifflin & Company. 1900. p. 3. 

• The largest squirrels living today are the Exilisciurus), which are smaller than some mice. The smallest adults of both genera average approximately 14 or 15 gm (roughly 0.5 oz).
  • Squirrels of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. 2012. p. 7. ISBN 1421404699. 

• Usually the red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius) waked me in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up and down the sides of the house, as if sent out of the woods for this purpose.
  • Henry David Thoreau, Thoreau, Henry David (1910). American red squirrel is now Tamiasciurus hudsonicus.)

• The squirrels in their silver fur will fall
  Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.
  • Elinor Wylie, "Wild Peaches"

• The squirrel gloats on his accomplish’d hoard,
  • Thomas Hood, "Autumn"

•   Up the oak-tree, close beside him,
  Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
  In and out among the branches,
  Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree,
  Laughed, and said between his laughing,
  “Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!”
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha (1855), III

•   Then said Hiawatha to him,
  “O my little friend, the squirrel,
  Bravely have you toiled to help me;
  Take the thanks of Hiawatha,
  And the name which now he gives you;
  For hereafter and forever
  Boys shall call you Adjidaumo,
  Tail-in-air the boys shall call you!”
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha (1855), VIII

• ’Spareth a squirrel that it nothing fears
  But steals the nut from underneath my thumb,
  And when I threat, bites stoutly in defence:
  • Robert Browning, "Caliban upon Setebos"
  • Dramatis Personæ (1864)

• Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,
  • George Meredith, "Love in the Valley" (1851; rev. 1883)
  • Variant: "whose nest is in" for "who leaps among"

• Mossy-footed squirrels leap
  Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep:
  • George Meredith, "The Woods Of Westermain" (1883), II

• From tree to tree the scampering squirrels run;
  • Eugene Lee-Hamilton, "Among the Firs" (1899)

• No time to see, when woods we pass,
  Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
  • William Henry Davies, "Leisure"

• And the brisk squirrel sports from bough to bough,
  • Joseph Warton, The Enthusiast (1744; rev. 1748)

External links

• Squirrel on Wikipedia
• squirrel on Wiktionary
• Sciuridae on Wikimedia Commons