This post has nothing to do with something I created for PlaiderPillar, but it IS about something very important to me: Animals. Before any other charity, animals will win my vote. I was raised in a home that always had pets. My parents taught me and my brother to be kind to animals, and that it was best to let wild animals be wild. I’m certain this is why most of my work is animal-centric.
Nothing rips at my heart like an animal in immediate need of help. And not like, “Awww, let’s go look at the puppies in the pet store.” More like, “A wounded baby opossum! Let’s take it home and care for it.”
So when Rob and I came across three baby squirrels that had fallen from their nest in high winds one evening while walking Charlie and Chloe, I was beside myself. Only one of them was alive, and BOY WAS IT ALIVE! It was screaming for its mama! Talk about heartbreaking. We buried the two who didn’t make it (tearfully, on my part), and contact the Nebraska Wildlife Rehab, who suggested we put him in a little box so the mama could find it and carry it back into the nest. We waited a grueling four hours, as the weather cold colder and rain approached. We came back, and there was no crying. Rob said, “OK, what do we do if it’s still in the box?”
“We’ll just hope that little baby is back in its nest,” I said.
It wasn’t. So we scooped him up in his box, took it home, having read online squirrel saving instructions. While I put a low heating pad under it, Rob went to the store for puppy formula and Pedialyte. All he could find that late at night was baby formula, which we were nervous to feed it, since the wrong food can easily kill them. I slowly warmed it before hydrating it with the Pedialyte in an eye dropper, clearing its mouth of grass debris. We did end up giving it some of the thinned out formula over night. And named him Bruce.
We restlessly slept while checking body temps, giving small amounts of Pedialyte, and keeping Charles away from him. Bruce was sleeping in a box on the heating pad between us in bed. Yep. I have slept with a wild squirrel.
In the morning, the Nebraska Wildlife Rehab called with the name of a volunteer who could pick him up. They said she had all the necessary gear, including squirrel formula. I had grown unexpectedly attached to Bruce, and cried like a baby handing him over. Dana and her daughter have proved to be WONDERFUL squirrel caretakers, however, and have given Bruce (who turned our to be Brucilla . . . a girl) a wonderful life.
I have loved following her progress on Facebook, as Brucilla’s eyes have opened and she is eating new foods all the time! They started giving her monkey pellets, and now she’s eating lotsa fruits with her crazy teeth!
I am so thankful for the Nebraska Wildlife Rehab. They are a wonderful organization, and Rob and I would love to be animal caretakers someday. The organization rescues (and releases!) tons of animals: coyotes, beavers, ground squirrels, deer, bats . . . and squirrels!
In a world of animals uprooted by construction, run over by traffic, mistreated by their owners, or neglected, I feel really alone in my beliefs about animals a lot. I am lucky that my family and Rob share my beliefs. (He said he had grown so attached to her after one night that he wanted to build her a squirrel house in our backyard with a tree in it.) And because there are people like the Wildlife Rehab volunteers, I feel less alone!
Photo credit for the last four photos: Dana Stump
