Posted on August 30, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Nothin’ Could Be Finer Than–HEY LOOK A SQUIRREL!

We interrupt this irregularly scheduled blogcast to present some extreme cuteness. It’s like cute overload without the kitty l33tspeak, y’all.

But also, it might be a little sad.

I will warn those of you who, like me, pretend to be bad-ass but are marshmallows on the inside when it comes to helpless baby h’aminals that these pictures might make you start blubbering. I warned you.

I slept in this morning, as I often do on Mondays (and other days ending in “day”), and when I took Heath out around 8AM he started acting weird. He really wanted to go over to a certain part of the lawn. Really, really bad. Like the way he does when there’s a rabbit or a squirrel. So I walked over there with him, and he immediately ran over to…

…a baby chupacabra!

No? Well, it did take me a minute to figure out that this was a baby squirrel, largely because there was a dog standing over it. I thought it was dead, but as Heath and I looked on out of morbid curiosity, I realized it was breathing every few seconds with big, gasping breaths.

So I ran back inside, got dressed for work, ran back out, and picked up the baby squirrel with my bare hands. Rabies-schmabies. He was cold (it was in the 70s this morning), so I took him inside and wrapped him in a dish towels and cuddled him and tried to warm him up. After a little while he started breathing better and moving his paws a little, so I took him back outside and put him on the ground, still in the dishtowel so that he’d be a little warm and my neighbors wouldn’t step on him. I made sure his mom could get him out if she came back for him, then left for work.

I’m still not sure whether he fell out of the tree or something took him out of it–he had some cuts on him, but that could easily be from falling through the branches or from his littermates’ wicked squirrel claws.

While at work, I used my mad resources (aka Jamie) to track down a list of local wildlife rehabilitators, and  a couple of hours later, I used my lunch break to come back from work to check on the little guy. He was still there, so I scooped him up, took him inside, and put him in a box with an old t-shirt and a bottle of hot water. Then I took Heath out and he immediately ran back over to the area where we’d found the squirrel. I figured he just wanted to investigate since he never realized that I’d picked the squirrel up and brought him inside, but no–he found a second baby squirrel that unfortunately was already dead.

That sealed it–baby squirrel number 1 was coming with me.

I took him to work and left him in my nice warm car (with the windows down a little so it didn’t get too hot), then grabbed my list of rehabbers and started calling. The first call went to an answering machine that said they weren’t accepting wildlife, but I managed to get a hold of someone on the second call and within a half hour I’d taken an extra-long lunch and driven to her house in Cary to drop him off.

He was a lot warmer than he had been on the ride over to Cary, but by the time we got there I couldn’t tell if he was breathing still. I told the rehabber I wasn’t sure if he was still alive and she said, “Well, we’ll see about that, let’s warm him up” and grabbed him and stuck him under her shirt. She told me to call her if I found any others. God bless wildlife rehabbers–that’s a ton of work for a unequal share of sorrow, but I bet when the little guys pull through it makes it all worthwhile.

I suppose I could call to see if he made it, but I’d rather leave it like this. If I don’t know, I can speculate that he’s still alive and warm and fed at the rehabber’s house, and I can console myself with the knowledge that if he died at least he died somewhere warm and soft instead of cold and alone in the leaves.

After I got home from work, I took Heath out and he led me back to the second baby squirrel. I buried it under the tree it fell out of and put a big rock on top so nothing digs it up. We’ll keep checking the area for a couple of days to see if any more baby squirrels turn up.

My Heathcliff is such a good boy! I wish he’d always find cute things instead of snakes…