BABY SQUIRREL

Yesterday on May 2 we were playing our favorite spy TV show game (Alias) outside when Anna spotted something behind a chair on our back porch. Naturally we thought it was a trick to get us out of our tree house fort. It turned out she was not lying about anything but she had found a baby squirrel. Minutes later we found squirrel fleas on it. The squirrel must have come from the hole in our roof. We had been seeing two babies playing and dangerously hanging around their ledge (eating our house) for a few days. Seeing that it could barely climb it must have fallen out. So we took it as a temporary pet. We fed it while we thought of ways to put it back in its/ours/a family of house sparrows/a hive of wasps/and some starling's house.

He had very minor injuries that we could see in fact he had no injuries (except for a bloody nose). He was playing with Anna. She let the flea ridden cutey crawl all over her shoulders and shirt. Which she claims felt very ticklish and hurt as the claws dug into her skin. But she didn't have the heart to get it off.

This is when Anna didn't care that the squirrel was covered with fleas. Later on when the fleas started hopping off  onto her she got terrified of the them and the bubonic plague.

The little squirrel that our hearts all fell for was my hand sized. I could cover his face and hold his whole body in my cupped hands.

We found an old bird cage in our basement (from our old dead bird Perdy). For the night we filled it with a sheet and an old sweater and a cardboard house and covered it with a blanket. We hoped we would see it alive in the morning. The next day when we went to check on it it was shivering in it's house but not dead. It warmed up as the day went along. He was fine until around lunch time and then the fleas started deserting his body!  They were jumping on us and looking for another host to eat alive. There was a fly that kept on landing on his face. But he was not dead. We supposed he was dying. By this point we had named him Chico.

As you can see he is adorable.

John gave him a hot water bottle (I don't know why because he didn't look cold). Anyways we went out to do errands which unfortunately I had to do with shoes on :(  By the time we came back he was happily chewing on his almonds!!!

We figured out how to get him home. We put a plank of wood across from the porch roof next to our bedroom windows over to his ledge. This rescue mission we had attempted once before but he was just too tired to move an inch but now that he was full of almonds he got onto to the plank and sat there for a while. This action enraged Theo, who wanted to kill him. He almost knocked down the window to get to the flea ridden beast. Finally Chico started moving along the plank until he stupidly decided to climb up the vertical wall instead. He was obviously not old enough to be climbing upside down and up straight walls. He fell backwards and ended up hanging from one claw from underneath the plank. The drop to the ground was longer than our longest ladder.  We screamed for John (who was the closest to a pillow and the plank) to run under the plank with the pillow ready to catch Chico. Fortunately the pillow wasn't needed because he regained his balance and sat up on the plank again.

Finally he started hopping towards his ledge and got on it but then he turned around and seemed to decide to go back again! John once again saved the day by taking down the plank of wood. From the ledge he climbed back into his hole while we all clapped and cheered. We have not seen him since. Probably he is afraid of coming out again.


by Claire