Black and grey tattoo of a curled-up sleeping squirrel framed by flowers and leaves, done in dotwork and linework on a lower leg.

Sleeping squirrel with flowers on a calf

Dotwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A squirrel lies curled up asleep, its bushy tail wrapped around its body and its head resting on its paws. A circle of small star-shaped flowers and broad leaves frames the animal. Fine stippling and bold outlines build the fur texture and shading, all in black and grey ink.

Dotwork Blackwork Botanical Calf Squirrel Flower Leaves Foliage Circle

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last caravan left Ashby Fair before the rain, and you were the one who had to carry the squirrel. Nobody else wanted her. Pip had ridden a tin bicycle around the ring for eleven seasons, a red rosette pinned to one ear, but her back legs had gone stiff and the ringmaster had sold the ponies to a farm near Boston. You wrapped her in your coat and held her against your chest the whole way down the A-road, feeling her heartbeat quicken over the bumps and then slow.

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By the second night at the lay-by outside Stamford, she had made a nest from your spare socks, and the tail she used to flick for applause was wrapped round her nose like a scarf. You kept the lamp low. The others had gone to find work in Skegness or a warehouse outside Peterborough, and the big top sat folded in the back of the lorry, its canvas smelling of diesel and old sawdust. Nobody bought tickets any more. Pip did not seem to mind.

In the morning you found a scatter of white five-petalled blossom from the hedge laid across the sock nest, each flower with a yellow eye at its centre. You had not seen her gather them. You set them in a jam jar on the dashboard and drove on towards the coast, slower than you needed to, because she had stopped waking up to check the road.

At the sea she opened her eyes once, looked at the grey water as if it were one more audience, and curled tighter. You sat on the shingle until the tide reached your boots. When you finally stood up, you left the jar on the stones beside her, and the blossom kept its colour a little longer than anything else in the van.