Did Benjamin Franklin write an epitaph for a squirrel?
Yes. In 1772, one of the most famous men of his century sat down in London, with the whole heavy world on his desk, and wrote a proper, formal epitaph for a squirrel he had never met, because a child he loved was sad. In this episode of Talking With Pets, Mungo returns to tell the honest story: the ocean crossing in a box, the wired castle, and the afternoon a great man stopped to be kind to the smallest thing.
History remembers the famous. Their pets remember the person. On Talking With Pets, a brown tabby cat named Prince MoRee runs a most unusual practice: he contacts the pets of history's greatest figures and lets them tell what they really saw. Tonight, the series' first squirrel, a small creature who saw only the edge of an enormous life, and is honest about exactly which piece he saw. True, surprising, and funnier than history has any right to be. Great for curious kids and the grown-ups listening with them.
This episode is fully scripted and has passed the Talking With Pets accuracy review. The recording is in production. The audio player and the full transcript will appear right here the day the episode goes live. Join the founding list below and we will write to you when it does.
From the episode
Roxie: What did he do?
Mungo: Georgiana wrote to him. To tell him her squirrel was dead. A small sadness, in the middle of a great man's enormous life. He had every reason to send back two kind lines and move on.
Mungo: Instead he sat down, this famous man, in London, with the whole heavy world on his desk, and he wrote me a proper epitaph. A real one. The kind you'd carve for a person you honored. For me. A squirrel he had never even met.
Prince MoRee: (reading the letter's gentle opening) âI lament with you most sincerely the unfortunate End of poor Mungo: Few Squirrels were better accomplish'd; for he had had a good Education, had travell'd far, and seen much of the World.â
Mungo: (quietly) Travelled far. He noticed I'd come a long way to get there.
What's true, what we filled in, what we imagined
Every episode of Talking With Pets is built in three honest layers. Here is how this one breaks down.
Documented in the historical record
Deborah Franklin sent a North American grey squirrel across the Atlantic as a gift to Georgiana Shipley, daughter of Franklin's English friends, the family of the Bishop of St Asaph. Georgiana named him Mungo and kept him as a beloved pet. In 1772 Mungo got out of his cage and was killed by a dog. Franklin, in London, wrote Georgiana a consolation letter dated 26 September 1772 containing the formal epitaph and the "Here Skugg lies snug" rhyme, quoted verbatim in the episode. Franklin's wider fame is real: the 1752 kite experiment, the lightning rod, the colonial post, and, after Mungo's death, the French alliance.
Grounded inference from the record
What the friendship felt like from a squirrel's height: Franklin as the big, warm, famous visitor who was kind to children and kind even to a squirrel in a cage. The record makes the affection clear; the nursery-level view of it is our warm reconstruction.
Story, voice, and feeling
Mungo's voice, the séance, and the ocean crossing told from inside the box are imagined. A squirrel cannot really be reached by a cat medium. The episode is also explicit about its own limits: everything after 1772, the Revolution and the fur hat in Paris, is told as hearsay, because Mungo was gone before any of it happened.
Sources and further reading
- Benjamin Franklin to Georgiana Shipley, 26 September 1772: the consolation letter, the prose opening (âFew Squirrels were better accomplish'dâ), the formal epitaph (âAlas! poor Mungo!â), and the âHere Skuggâ rhyme, all quoted verbatim in the episode. Founders Online, National Archives, document 01-19-02-0202. founders.archives.gov
- Mungo as Georgiana Shipley's pet: sent by Deborah Franklin as a gift to the Shipley family (the Bishop of St Asaph); killed by a dog, named Ranger in the epitaph, in 1772. Same letter and its editorial notes, Founders Online. founders.archives.gov
- âSkuggâ as the common English nickname for any squirrel, per Franklin's own note in the letter. Founders Online. founders.archives.gov
- Franklin's fame as Mungo would have overheard it: the 1752 kite experiment and the lightning rod, and the reorganized colonial post. The Franklin Institute, Benjamin Franklin resources. fi.edu
- Events after Mungo's death, told in the episode as hearsay: American independence (1776), Franklin's arrival in France (December 1776), and the French alliance (1778). National Archives, founding-era records. archives.gov
All historical claims above were checked in the Talking With Pets accuracy review, most recently the full editorial pass of July 2026.
Did Benjamin Franklin write an epitaph for a squirrel?
Yes. In September 1772, Franklin, then in London, wrote a consolation letter to Georgiana Shipley after her pet squirrel Mungo was killed by a dog. The letter contains a full, formal epitaph beginning "Alas! poor Mungo!" and a short rhyme, "Here Skugg lies snug, as a bug, in a rug." Source: Founders Online, National Archives, document 01-19-02-0202.
Was Mungo Benjamin Franklin's pet?
No, and the episode is careful about this. Mungo was a North American grey squirrel that Deborah Franklin sent from Philadelphia as a gift to Georgiana Shipley, the young daughter of Franklin's English friends. Mungo lived in her household in England and died in 1772. Franklin was the kind family friend, not the owner. Source: Founders Online.
Where does "snug as a bug in a rug" come from?
One of the most famous early uses is Franklin's 1772 letter about Mungo: "Here Skugg lies snug, as a bug, in a rug." Skugg was the everyday English nickname for any squirrel, the way every cat was called Puss. Franklin gave the sad child both the grand epitaph and the cozy little rhyme. Source: Founders Online.
Did Mungo see the American Revolution?
No, and the episode says so plainly. Mungo died in 1772, before independence was declared and before Franklin sailed to France in 1776. The episode tells those later events honestly as things Mungo only heard about, a small lesson in what a witness can and cannot claim.
What is Talking With Pets, and is it good for kids?
Talking With Pets is an educational history podcast for curious kids ages 6 to 10 and the grown-ups listening with them. A brown tabby cat named Prince MoRee contacts the pets of history's greatest figures, who tell the true story of the person they knew. Every episode is sourced and divided into what is documented, what was filled in, and what was imagined, which makes it a quiet lesson in how to weigh sources. It is a Talking With Pets production.
Talking With Pets · the true stories only the animals saw.
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