by Moe Zilla

Created on: July 23, 2010

"Once upon a time there was a little fat comfortable grey squirrel, called Timmy Tiptoes." Unfortunately, he's in for a very uncomfortable experience when a mob of angry squirrels descends upon him, and falsely accuses him of stealing their acorns. "The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes" is one of Beatrix Potter's most unusual books. Though she lived in England, she fills this story with animals found in North America -     meaning she never observed any of the animals in the wild before drawing the book's illustrations!

She's done enough research to know that there's a certain amount of randomness in the way acorns get stored for the winter. "Squirrels who bury their nuts in the ground lose more than half," she writes, "because they cannot remember the place." But Timmy Tiptoes is diligent and organized, storing all his acorns in the same hollow tree. The same can't be said for a "forgetful squirrel" named Silvertail, who can't remember where he buried his own acorns, then digs up the acorns of another squirrel, "and there was a fight."

About this time, a flock of birds flies over their meadow, singing their pretty birdsong which, unfortunately, sounds like words to the fighting squirrels. ("Who's bin diggin-up MY nuts?") Because they sing the song near poor Timothy, the other squirrels assume he has, in fact, been swiping their acorns. They "cuffed and scratched him," and when Timothy tries to escape to his hollow tree, they capture him and then push his fat body through the tiny hole in the hollow tree. Making his situation even worse, Timmy has a "little squirrel wife" named Goody who's waiting worriedly at home for him, passing "a lonely and unhappy night," after which she wanders throughout the woods, calling his name.

The story gets a little more complicated when Potter introduces a second set of characters. The squirrel is rescued by a chipmunk - but then that chipmunk's wife is also strolling the woods looking for him. (The two wives find their way to the hollow tree, but the chipmunk wife doesn't want to climb through the hole, because she knows that her husband bites!") And unfortunately, now Timothy is too fat to crawl out of the hole, but eventually the wind blows off the top of the tree altogether.

One biographer described this as "the least satisfactory" of Beatrix Potter's books, according to Wikipedia. (The illustrations are a little disappointing, since they're not as cozy or as lifelike as the drawings from Potter's other books.) There's some disturbing details in the plot, and some odd tension in the married life of the chipmunk couple. It's hard to imagine there could be this many problems with a simple Beatrix Potter story about a cute little squirrel. But she's written so many other enjoyable fairy tales that there's a lot of other stories to choose from!

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