Friday the squirrel–the former pet of poet and College namesake John Greenleaf Whittier (JGW)–arrived on campus in 1980. He came as part of a larger JGW collection obtained by the College that included, according to former librarian Philip O’Brien ’61, “virtually the entire contents of the poet’s Oak Knoll Library,” including chairs, desk, books, papers, magazines, and pictures.
The story of Friday begins with a caring individual who rescued the tiny foundling from certain death. When nearly grown, “with a fine gray coat and a plumy tail,” he was given to JGW who kept him as a pet for many years. Although Friday had a cage for a home, he often left his nest, to run about the various rooms of the house, and, occasionally, he escaped to the trees, and leaped from bough to bough; but always he came back to his home. Friday entertained himself storing nuts in all kinds of secret places: behind picture frames, between books and loose papers, in the library, and even under JGW’s coat collar.
Friday lived a long and comfortable life. JGW was so attached to the small creature that after his death the squirrel was stuffed and kept on the poet’s desk. Whittier also wrote a poem in honor of his pet beginning with, “Alack! the day when Friday lay/ Quiescent in his cage.”
On the College campus, Friday was a known fixture even before the real article arrived. In the 1970s and 1980s, well before Johnny Poet became the College’s official costumed mascot, it was a student in a big Friday the Squirrel costume who led cheers and rallies at sports events. Today, the squirrel can be found on display in the Bonnie Bell Wardman Library and has assumed the role of the College’s unofficial mascot.