Little Ted likes squirrels but why can he never catch one. Instead he'll have to settle for making a squirrel picture.
Little Ted and his Mummy and Daddy were out for a walk and Little Ted was an inquisitive mood. As they strolled along and his Mummy or Daddy pointed something out, Little Ted would follow up with a question:
“How do birds fly?”
“What does that sign mean?”
“Why can’t I pick the flowers?”
His Mummy and Daddy did their best to answer his questions, although sometimes even they were a bit stuck about the answer to questions like “Do baby squirrels eat nuts?”
Little Ted liked squirrels and was always trying to catch them, although so far without any success as they ran back up the tree to safety.
“Why can’t I climb a tree like the squirrel – there’s nothing to hold onto”
“That’s because squirrels have special sharp claws that allow them to grip to the tree bark” answered his Daddy.
“But my finger nails are quite sharp” Little Ted said
“Not like a squirrel’s, they’re both hard and sharp. And I read somewhere that they can rotate their feet to help them to cling on and even come down a tree face first.”
Little Ted held his leg out and wiggled his foot but he didn’t think he could face forwards when climbing down a tree. Then he tried running across the grass using his hands and feet, but that was much harder than it looked.
“They can also leap straight up in the air higher than you Little Ted” added his Daddy, so Little Ted tried to jump straight up and down but it felt like he hardly got off the ground.
“I don’t think I’d make a very good squirrel” Little Ted said sadly.
“Maybe not” said his Mummy smiling “But why don’t we gather up some dry leaves and seeds and we can make a picture of a squirrel when we get home. We’ll print off a drawing and you can glue everything on to fill it in.”
Little Ted liked that idea and soon had a bag filled with lots of things. He liked red squirrels the best so he was trying to only pick up things that were reddy brown in colour. There were plenty of fallen leaves on the ground just the right shade, some beech nuts that the squirrels had missed and two small shiny black stones he thought he could use for the eyes.
“What about the tail” he asked “I need something fluffy and don’t know what to use?”
His Mummy and Daddy thought about this. It didn’t seem right to use feathers because squirrels didn’t have wings, even though they flew through the air from tree to tree.
“I know” said his Mummy “see If you can find some puffy dandelions you can use the white seeds as they’re nice and fluffy. You know, the things you blow to tell the time with a dandelion clock”
Little Ted had to hunt for quite a long time to find dandelions with white fluffy heads but just as he was about to give up, he found a big patch.
“Yippee, lots of puffy seeds for me” and he picked them very carefully so all the seeds didn’t blow away.
Once they were back at home, his Daddy laid a newspaper down on the kitchen table before Little Ted emptied out the bag, while his Mummy printed off an outline drawing of a squirrel that Little Ted could fill in. His Daddy said to make sure he used plenty of glue on the leaves and nuts, but only a little glue on the dandelion seeds so they stayed fluffy, and Little Ted set to work.
It took quite a long time for Little Ted to be happy with his picture and he glued on lots of leaves to make it look more like fur but in the end he declared the picture was “FINISHED”.
“Well you have made a good job of that Little Ted. There’s just one thing left to do.”
“What’s that?” Little Ted asked
“You have to give the squirrel in your picture a name”
“Oh. How about Sammy? Sammy the Squirrel” and with his Mummy’s help he wrote this at the bottom of the paper.
The End