The Squirrel’s Arithmetic
High on the branch of a walnut tree
A bright-eyed squirrel sat.
What was he thinking so earnestly?
And what was he looking at?
The forest was green around him,
The sky blue over his head;
His nest was in a hollow limb,
And his children snug in bed.
He was doing a problem o’er and o’er,
Busily thinking was he;
How many nuts for this winter’s store
He could hide in the hollow tree.
He sat so still on the swaying bough
You might have thought him asleep.
Oh, no; he was trying to reckon now
The nuts the babies could eat.
Then suddenly he frisked about,
And down the tree he ran.
“The best way to do, without a doubt,
Is to gather all I can.”
Annie Douglas Bell