Squirrels.....baby squirrels

One of our wonderful southern thunder storms was rolling in from the West with winds gusting up to 50 mph. I ran outside to catch and secure things being blown across the yard, my Catahoula "Belle" was at my heels enjoying the excitement of it all. Standing underneath one of the large oaks in the front yard I heard a familiar squeaking and quickly scanned the ground underneath the tree. Belle had her nose to the ground frozen in place and I knew she had found a baby squirrel. Actually, she had found 4 babies just blown from their nest. They had fur but their eyes were not yet open. I searched the tree for the nest but it had been completely destroyed by the wind. I scooped up the 4 babies and took them in the house to show George. Belle was fascinated with the tiny critters and watched everything I did. Buckets of rain began to pour down outside and suddenly George and I realized Belle was not in the house. Belle is a spoiled house dog who considers it beneath her to be in the yard in rain or cold. She has a doggie door that she and the other pets use to come and go. We knew she had went back into the yard to hunt for more squirrels!. I opened the front door to call her in and there she lay against the door with another baby squirrel between her paws just waiting for us to open the front door. So now we had 2 boys and 3 girls. We made a trip to the pet store to pick up some puppy replacement milk and a feeding syringe. I had raised squirrels in the past to release back into the wild so I knew the routine.

As the little hungry sweeties grew I had to switch to a small bulb to keep up with their appetites. I kept a large wire cage that was on legs on the front porch and filled it with oak tree limbs and pine limbs. I also provided them with unsalted shelled sunflower seeds, dried corn on the cob and a selection of fruits and veggies. They would jump out of the cage on to my clothes and explore every pocket and opening. Their little white pot bellies were so soft and they would curl up for a nap hidden away in their "forest" inside their cage. Of course as all babies do, they grew, I weaned them and took them out to the swamp in the woods and released them. I think I would have liked being the person at the zoo that raises the baby animals. I seem to have a natural gift for it. I once was brought a baby bird that had just hatched. It had no feathers and it's eyes had not opened. I took it to the pet store and they decided it was a downy woodpecker. I had to buy meal worms, cut their pincher heads off and feed them to "Jonathan" with a pair of tweezers. I also soaked dry dog food in warm water and fed that to him as well. Jonathan grew to be very beautiful and would follow me up to my mom's house, sit in the redbud tree out front and wait for me to walk back down the street to go home. For a while after I released him, I could go out to my back patio and call him and he would show up after a few minutes for a snack. Then one day he stopped coming to visit.

I told God that I think I would much rather live in the garden in heaven with all the animals than in a mansion of gold. And I want to wear purple.