Colour traditional-style tattoo of a squirrel in a bow tie holding an acorn, with a speech bubble reading gracias, on the upper arm.

Cartoon squirrel with acorn and gracias speech bubble

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A cartoon squirrel wearing a light blue bow tie sits upright and holds an acorn against its chest, with its bushy tail curling behind it. A black-outlined speech bubble containing the word gracias in script sits to the left, and a partial red-orange tattoo is visible at the top edge of the frame. The shading is soft and the linework is bold and black, with the brown, orange and blue inks set against the skin on the upper arm.

Traditional Upper arm Squirrel Acorn Bow tie Speech bubble Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm found the squirrel on the south wall at Prime, sitting bolt upright on the lintel of the herb store as if it had been waiting for the bell. It wore a pale blue bow tie. Nobody at Saint Oswin's could say where it had come from, only that it had turned up the autumn the Spanish pilgrim, Señor Ortega, stayed three nights in the guesthouse and taught the novices to say thank you properly.

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Every morning after that, Anselm left a saucer of hazelnuts by the wall, and every morning the squirrel took exactly one, turned it over in its paws, and went away again without touching the rest. Brother Gilbert, who kept the accounts and thought the whole business frivolous, counted the saucer each evening and swore it was never lighter by more than one.

On the feast of Saint Benedict the squirrel did not come. Anselm searched the orchard, the bee skeps and the cold cellar where the apples were kept, and at last found it in the cloister garth, tucked under the stone bench with an acorn clutched to its chest like a warm loaf. It had been carrying the acorn all week, he realised, because the one real oak in the grounds had dropped its fruit beside the well, and the squirrel had been saving the best one for the day it could give something back.

Anselm took the acorn gently and pressed it into the damp earth by the wall, where the frost would not reach it. The squirrel watched him with great seriousness, then said, in a small clear voice nobody else at the priory ever heard, "Gracias." Anselm, who had spent forty years not being surprised, sat down on the wet step and laughed until Gilbert came out to see what the matter was.