The cute and friendly Friday the Squirrel is the former pet of famed American poet and Whittier College namesake, John Greenleaf Whittier (JGW).
The story of Friday begins with a caring individual who rescued the tiny foundling from certain death. When nearly grown, 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 even 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 became the school's mascot in the 1970s and 1980s. Well before Johnny Poet became the face of the Poets, a student in a big Friday the Squirrel costume led cheers and rallies at sports events.
Today, his distant cousins still scramble and sprint around the campus. Stuffed animals of the beloved squirrel are also available in the College bookstore and he remains an unofficial mascot of Whittier.
