I'm a merry, merry squirrel,
All day I leap and whirl
Through my home in the old beech-tree
If you chase me I will run
In the shade and in the sun;
But you never, never can catch me
For round a bough I'll creep,
Playing hide and seek so sly;
Or through the leaves bo-peep,
With my little shining eye.
Up and down I run and frisk,
With my bushy tail to whisk
All who mope in the old beech-trees.
How droll to see the owl
As I make him wink and growl,
While his sleepy, sleepy head I tease!
And I waken up the bat,
Who flies off with a scream,
For he thinks that I'm the cat
Pouncing on him, in his dream.
Through all the summer long
I never want a song
From birds in the old beech-trees
I have singers all the night,
And with the morning bright
Come my busy, humming, fat, brown bees.
When I've nothing else to do
With the nursing birds I sit;
And we laugh at the cuckoo
A-coo-cooing to her tit!
When winter comes with snow
An its cruel tempests blow
All my leaves from the old beech-trees,
Then beside the wren and mouse
I furnish up a house,
Where, like a prince, I live at ease.
What care I for hail or sleet,
With my cozy cap and coat;
And my tail about my feet,
Or wrapped about my throat?