(Roughly) Daily

In the early 1940s, LIFE magazine reported that a Mrs. Mark Bullis of Washington, D.C., had adopted a squirrel “before his eyes were open, when his mother died and left him in a tree” in the Bullis’s back yard. Here, in a series of photos by Nina Leen, LIFE.com chronicles the quiet, rodential adventures and sartorial splendor of Tommy Tucker, the orphaned — and, in 1940s America, the celebrated — squirrel.

“Most squirrels,” LIFE noted (with a striking lack of evidence), “are lively and inquisitive animals who like to do tricks when they have an audience.” They do?

At any rate, LIFE went on to observe that the squirrel, dubbed Tommy Tucker by the Bullis family, “is a very subdued little animal who has never had a chance to jump around in a big tree.”

“Mrs. Bullis’ main interest in Tommy,” LIFE continued, “is in dressing him up in 30 specially made costumes. Tommy has a coat and hat for going to market, a silk pleated dress for company, a Red Cross uniform for visiting the hospital”…

Read more– and see over a dozen more shots of a resplendent Tommy– at “A Squirrel’s Guide to Fashion.” And read more of Tommy’s story in this Washington Post piece.

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As we redouble our resolve to refresh our wardrobes, we might send stylish birthday greetings to Jeanette “Jennie” Jerome (later, and better, known as Lady Randolph Churchill); she was born in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn on this date in 1854.  Considered one of the great beauties of her time, Jennie married Lord Randolph Churchill when she was twenty.  The couple was engaged three days after meeting; but their marriage was delayed for months by arguments (a la Downton) between their families over settlements… a delay that may have contributed to the awkwardness of the timing of their first child, born under eight months after the wedding.  That son, Winston Churchill, who became Britain’s Prime Minister, was asked about the circumstances of his birth; he replied, “although present on the occasion, I have no clear recollection of the events leading up to it.”

Jennie in the 1880s

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