Poem for Wednesday and Mountain Squirrel

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!

-------- 

Much of my Wednesday involved complications getting my new phone, around chatting with two of my high school friends in the morning and watching the first half of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania with Kristen in the afternoon. For about the dozenth time since we've lived here, UPS had all our information and phone number to deliver an expedited package yet decided to report it undeliverable rather than, you know, contact us to tell us they couldn't find our apartment; I ran out and chased down the truck, whose driver at first denied that he had the package, then went in the back and found it. 

Most of my late afternoon and evening involved setting up the new phone, which required calling Verizon for activation and listening to multiple sales pitches as well as waiting for programs and data to transfer and getting rid of apps that don't work on the newer Galaxy models. The good news is that since they didn't have a replacement S22, they sent me the S24, so I have a much newer phone with a camera that gets ranked better. Now we're watching Deadpool 2 now so we'll be ready for Deadpool and Wolverine in two days. We got to watch this hungry ground squirrel on top of Crystal Mountain: