... I got to the point where I am seeing Jjoongramis in any squirrel images and treating minor squirrel sightings in the park like fanmeetings.
For the longest time, I believed that this obsession came out of nowhere, but suddenly I realized: oh, but I have had squirine influences throughout my entire life! It's like destiny was preparing me for the fateful meeting with a certain orange-furred menace!
First important squirrel in my life was probably Squirrel with a Marvelous Tail I met in "Moominland Midwinter".
The one braincell he owns is preoccupied with only the right things (namely, his Marvelous Tail). He doesn't bother remembering anything else (for instance, some non-negotiable instructions telling him to stay inside and NOT to meet Lady of the Cold) and freezes to death.
However! Then the spring comes, and turns out he literally defeated death.
Is Squirrel with a Marvelous Tail a missing link between Osiris and Jesus in the motif of Dying-and-Rising God?
While digging through the old papers, I've recently found the letter (more of a wishlist, or even more fair, a demand list) little me had addressed to Santa-Claus. Among other things I ask to get me, I kid you not, "a real squirrel and a real eagle-owl" (got neither; was severely dissapointed). I bet that if I got a squirrel not endowed with a Marvelous Tail, my dissapointment would only multiply.
Then, of course, came Ice Age. I treated Scrat as a main character, while all the found family stuff was but an obnoxious interlude.
I wonder when will they stop with Send Me on My Way and tell us what happes to the acorn?!
Oh, and of course I do love Ratatosk, aka the Squirrel of them all!
Ratatosk is the squirrel who there shall run
On the ash-tree Yggdrasil;
From above the words of the eagle he bears,
And tells them to Nithhogg beneath.
(Poetic Edda, tr. by Henry Addams Bellows)
Birds and the bees may be the more obvious choice for the role of a mystic messengers (remember, the bees are also living in the Yggdrasil branches) , but the liminal potential of squirrels remains untapped.
Squirrel moving to the top of the tree to squeak to God about your less than stellar behaviour? Yep, can totally see it.
A couple of honorable mentions:
I also like the German proverb stating that der Teufel ist ein Eichhörnchen (Devil is a squirrel).
When I was watching Polish cult web series Kraina Grzybów, it took me some reverse engineering to recognize the orange blobby creature as a squirrel - only after the subtitle literally told me DEVIL.
(the blobby creature is called Małgosia, be nice to her)
And last but not least: a highly territorial squirrel from Baldur's Gate 3 that promises that, thank God, she won't do us no harm - as long as we stick to the ground and don't think about climbling trees, her domain.
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