Hans Ostrom’s speaker has clearly spent years watching squirrels, and the poem reads like an affectionate field note. The speaker admires how squirrels live “just outside domesticity”—neither tame nor fully wild—and seems to recognize something familiar in their anxious staring, forgetful hoarding, dainty eating, sudden naps, and frantic bursts of energy. The mood is warm, amused, and observant rather than reverent. Squirrels are not the grand wilderness the speaker once imagined, but that’s all right: they are exactly what squirrels should be, “and slightly more.” The closing lines catch that extra unpredictability—a surprise still leaping out of evolution to seize a nut, bury it, pat the soil, and dash away. It’s a small celebration of ordinary wildness, full of fondness and gentle humor.
Squirrels — Summary
I’ve watched squirrels my whole life. They inhabit a zone just outside domesticity, are diplomatically wild. They worry and stare,
behaviors of which I approve. They horde forgetfully, gorge daintily. Sometimes they just stop. And fall asleep, mid-day,
on a limb or a fence post, all energy drained. Sometimes frenzy possesses them—something to do
with sex or fleas—mad bursts of wants followed by a frozen pose. Squirrels are not everything I had hoped wilderness
to be. They are though everything I would want squirrels to be, and slightly more, for there’s always
just one more surprise ready to leap out of squirrel-evolution and seize the nut, bury it, and pat fresh
soil over the nut-grave. And run away!