A HAPPY ENDING

Marilyn (my roommate) came in the other day and asked me to check online to find out what to feed baby squirrels. A young girl in the townhouse complex next door had discovered two baby squirrels in the roadway and was afraid they would be killed. She put them in a box and delivered them to the green space behind our building thinking that would be a safe place. A couple of hours later one of my neighbours had her dog out and saw the squirrels.  That's when Marilyn came in. Once I discovered what to feed them, I went down to find one of the babies up a tree, and the other one a couple of feet up in another. That one seemed very weak and scared. I eventually picked it up.


Another neighbour arrived and that's when the 'action' really started. She had spent 25 years in wildlife rescue. She asked me to call a wildlife rescue centre in Mount Brydges, but unfortunately he was full. Back down I went. By that time Debbie had coaxed the other baby down from the tree. Actually, she just called it and it came and started following her. She  picked up some puppy formula and a couple of syringes at the pet store and tried to feed them. One ate well, the other seemed too weak to swallow, but with coaxing it finally began to eat. I supplied a box to put them in and they curled up and went to sleep - as you can see in the photo.

It was at this point that the little girl came back. And it was then that she told us that the mother had been with the babies right after she brought them to our property. If we had known that before, we would have left them alone, but as we saw no adult squirrels anywhere we naturally assumed the mother had been killed and left the babies. Now we had to figure out what to do with them. It was close to dusk. The night temperature would have been too cold for them. Also they were young enough that they needed feeding every couple of hours to keep them from dehydrating. Someone said, "Look up there - in the tree!"  There was a squirrel with another baby in her mouth. Evidently she was moving to a new nest. That day we had had a very heavy rainfall and high winds. Quite probably her nest had been partially destroyed, and maybe that's how the babies came to be in the road. The mother came back but wouldn't come down low enough to see the babies.

So Debbie took them in for the night and cared for them. Early next morning she took the box and left it where the mother would find it, then watched from a distance. It wasn't long before she found them and took them to the nest. We were all excited to know that mother and babies had been successfully and safely reunited. I love happy endings, don't you?