The Squirrel by Mildred Bowers Armstrong
Quick answer: The Squirrel by Mildred Bowers Armstrong explained for Class 7: summary, metaphor and rhyme scheme, NCERT question answers and lessons for young poets.
Six brisk lines, one grey overcoat, and a tail shaped like a punctuation mark: The Squirrel by Mildred Bowers Armstrong is one of the shortest poems in the NCERT Class 7 Honeycomb reader, and one of the most complete. It watches its subject with the accuracy of someone who has genuinely stood under the tree: the curled tail, the upright posture while eating a nut, the teasing character, and the closing game in which the children run around the trunk while the squirrel calmly keeps the trunk between them.
Armstrong herself is a near mystery. Almost no reliable biographical detail about her circulates, and she survives, rather like her subject, by staying small and quick. The poem repays study because it demonstrates how much work a single exact metaphor can do, which is exactly why examiners keep setting questions on its figures of speech. Here is the poem walked through, the craft opened up, the standard answers sorted, and the lesson a working poet can take from six lines about one rodent.
What the poem says
The poem is a portrait built from four observations. First, the tail: the squirrel wears a question mark for a tail, the curled shape rendered in a single image. Second, the coat: an overcoat of grey, which is the animal's fur turned into clothing. Third, the manners: he sits up straight to eat a nut, a small gentleman at his dinner. Fourth, the character: he likes to tease and play, and the proof arrives in the final two lines. When the watching children run around his tree, he simply goes the other way, keeping the trunk forever between himself and them.
Notice the pronoun in those closing lines: we. The speaker is not a lone observer but part of a group of children playing a game they cannot win, and the poem is affectionate about losing. Nothing is stated about how the game ends, because it does not end; the poem closes mid-chase, which is why the squirrel in it is still running a century of classrooms later.
How the poem works
Two figures of speech carry the whole piece. The question mark is a metaphor, and an unusually smart one: it is shape-exact, since a squirrel's curled tail really does draw that mark in the air, and it is character-exact too, because a squirrel's whole posture is one of alert curiosity, a small living question. The overcoat is personification, dressing the animal like a tidy old gentleman and setting up the upright table manners of the next line. One comparison for the body, one costume for the character: that is the entire toolkit, and it is enough.
The sound is equally economical. The even lines rhyme, grey with play with way, while the odd lines run free, giving the poem the skip of a playground rhyme without the thump of full couplets. The metre moves in a rough ballad rhythm, longer lines alternating with shorter ones. And there is not a single wasted adjective: every word either shows the animal or moves the game along. Six lines, nothing spare.
The game at the end
The final two lines are a miniature drama with a winner, and the winner is not human. The children circle the trunk; the squirrel circles it in the opposite direction; the distance between them never closes. The phrase about going the other way is both literal, a direction of travel, and a gentle punchline, the squirrel's whole philosophy of dealing with people.
What the ending establishes is the relationship, and it is worth naming in an exam answer: not fear on either side, but play. The poem has already told us the squirrel likes to tease, so his evasion is not panic, it is participation. He is playing the game too, and playing it better. A lesser poem would have ended with the animal fleeing or the children catching it; Armstrong ends with a draw that can loop forever, which is precisely how children and squirrels actually coexist.
NCERT question answers, the short way
Questions on this poem test whether you noticed the details and can name the devices. Both take about two minutes to fix in memory.
Why tiny poems last
A six-line poem has no room to hide, so every syllable must earn its place, and when they all do, the result is practically indestructible. Children memorise The Squirrel in five minutes and can still recite it at fifty, which is a kind of immortality most epics never achieve. Its size is not a limitation but a survival strategy: small enough to carry, sharp enough to keep.
It also teaches, quietly, that observation is a skill and not an accident. The poem contains no opinions about squirrels, no lesson, no sentiment beyond affection. It simply proves that ten minutes of genuine looking can produce something permanent, and that is a more useful lesson for a young writer than most essays on style.
What today's poet can steal
Steal the single exact metaphor. One question mark does more work than fluffy, bushy, curly and cute stacked together, because it makes the reader see the shape rather than skim the label. The discipline to find one comparison that is physically accurate, and then stop, is worth more than a notebook of decorative images. Try it: pick any animal and find the one everyday object its silhouette secretly draws.
And let the creature win. The strongest animal poems keep the animal unknowable and slightly superior, escaping the poem the way the squirrel escapes the children. Resist the urge to end on a moral or to make the animal a symbol of something; the refusal to capture your subject is itself the poem's honesty, and readers can feel the difference.
What poets can take from this
- Fix the four details in memory: question-mark tail, grey overcoat, upright nut-eating, running the other way.
- Name both devices in answers: metaphor for the tail, personification for the overcoat.
- Give the rhyme scheme as abcbdb, with the even lines rhyming.
- When asked about the ending, mention that the squirrel is teasing and playing, not fleeing in fear.
- In your own animal poems, allow yourself one comparison only, and make it physically exact.
- End your animal poem with the animal still free; captured subjects make dead poems.
Try it yourself
Sit where you can watch one animal, a pigeon, a lizard, a street dog, for ten full minutes, then write a poem of six lines or fewer built around a single shape comparison, and resist explaining it.
Questions
Why does the poet say the squirrel wore a question mark for a tail?
Because a squirrel's tail curls up and over its back in the exact shape of a question mark. The image is a metaphor: the poet does not say the tail is like a question mark but states it directly. It also hints at the squirrel's curious, alert character.
Which figures of speech are used in The Squirrel?
The two main devices are metaphor and personification. The curled tail is described as a question mark, a direct metaphor, while the grey fur becomes an overcoat, treating the animal as a well-dressed little person. The upright posture while eating adds to this human-like portrait.
What does the squirrel do when the children run around the tree?
He runs the other way around the trunk, so the tree always stays between him and the children. The poem presents this as teasing and play rather than fear. The chase never ends, and that unresolved game gives the poem its charm.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated September 2026.
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