Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, by Suri Nagamma

Would that fellow stay quiet? No, he began begging of
Bhagavan for forgiveness by crawling hither and thither.

Bhagavan put the nuts on the window sill and on the sofa
and told him to help himself. But no, he wouldn’t even touch
them. Bhagavan pretended to be indifferent and not to notice.

But he would crawl up to Bhagavan’s legs, jump on his body,
climb on his shoulders and do ever so many things to attract
attention. Then Bhagavan told us all, “Look, this fellow is
begging me to forgive him his mischief in biting my finger
and to give up my refusal to feed him with my own hands.”
He pushed the squirrel away for some days saying,
“Naughty creature! Why did you bite my finger? I won’t
feed you now. That is your punishment. Look, the nuts are
there. Eat them all.” The squirrel would not give up his
obstinacy either. Some days passed and Bhagavan had finally
to admit defeat because of his mercy towards devotees. It
then occurred to me that it was through pertinacity that
devotees attained salvation.

That squirrel did not stop at that. He gathered together
a number of his gang and began building a nest in the roof
of the hall exactly above the sofa. They began squeezing
into the beam bits of string, coconut fibre and the like.

Whenever there was wind, those things used to fall down; so
people got angry and began to drive them away. Bhagavan
however used to feel very grieved at the thought that there
was not sufficient room for the squirrels to build a nest and
that the people in the hall were driving them away. We have
only to see Bhagavan’s face on such occasions to understand
the depth of his love and affection for such beings.

When I told Bhagavan that I had written to you about
the squirrels in my usual letter, he remarked with evident
pleasure: “There is a big story about these squirrels. Some
time back they used to have a nest near the beam above me.

They had children and then grand children and thus the
members of their family grew very large. They used to play
about on this sofa in whatever way they liked. When I went
out for my usual walk, some little squirrels used to hide under
the pillow and when on my return, I reclined on the pillow,
they used to get crushed. We could not bear the sight of this,
and so Madhava drove the squirrels out of the nest and sealed
it by nailing some wooden boards over it. There are lots of
incidents about them if one cared to write them.”