by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 02, 2010

"This is a tale about a tail - a tail that belonged to a little red squirrel..." It's Beatrix Potter's third story, one of three which began as a letter to a friend's young daughter. She introduces Nutkin the Squirrel, who has a brother named Twinkleberry. They live together by the edge of a lake which has an island in its middle where the squirrels want to gather nuts.

Potter drew an adorable illustration of all the little squirrels riding their tiny squirrel-sized rafts over to the island. But on a hollow tree on the island lives a mysterious owl named Old Brown, and the visiting squirrels always first deliver a present. "Old Mr. Brown, will you favour us with permission to gather nuts upon your island?" asks each of the supplicant squirrels.  All except Nutkin, who instead insists on teasing the owl every time with a new rhyming riddle.

"Riddle me, riddle me, rot-tot-tote!
A little wee man, in a red red coat!
A staff in his hand, and a stone in his threat;
If you'll tell me this riddle, I'll give you a groat!"

As the story wanders along, Potter supplies lots of charming illustrations of the animals at work. There's a squirrel tossing an acorn down from a tree, and another drawing of all the squirrels lining up to deliver another offering. But Nutkin still insists on teasing the owl instead, and the story suggests that a real mischief lurks in his bright eyes and bushy tail. And instead of delivering treats, he continues taunting the owl with fresh riddles.

"The man in the wilderness said to me,
'How many strawberries grow in the seda?'
I answered him as I thought good -
'As many red herrings as grow in the wood.'"

This pattern repeats through six days, until it reaches its dramatic climax. Nutkin recites a riddle where the answer is the wind - and decides to act it out by leaping towards the owl's head.  "Then all at once there was a flutterment and a scufflement and a loud 'Squeak!'" The owl catches the squirrel, and - like Peter Rabbit - he'll have to leave something behind if he wants to make his escape. The story ends with the squirrel making an escape when "his tail broke in two".

Young children might find this disturbing - especially the book's final illustration, showing Nutkin's tail as just a short, bushy stub. But there's a punchline to this story, echoing the "why things are the way they are" stories which inspired Potter's work. To this day, Potter explains, this is why Nutkin the squirrel will never tell you a riddle.  If you ask him for one now, he'll scold and stamp his feet, and shout squirrel noises back at you.

"Cuck-cuck-cuck-cur-r-r-cuck-k!"

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