Animal Rescue

Those of you who read this blog or know Ben have probably figured out that Ben has a soft spot for animals. Not just dogs, but all animals. Especially small, fury, cuddly animal. Yesterday while we were dumping the trash in our alley, Ben discovered these little guys:

Three baby squirrels in a box

It was 3:30 in the afternoon. We had friends coming for dinner at 5, and we were supposed to stop by our neighbors for a tea party reunion half an hour ago. I wasn't particularly in the mood to play animal rescue hero, but Ben wouldn't have any other way.

Ben called the Emergency Animal Abuse hotline to figure out what to do. They said they'd send out wildlife rescue sometime that afternoon, but wouldn't give us a time. Ben wanted to take the squirrels in our apartment. I wanted to leave them outside until animal control came. We compromised by moving them to our garage.

Of course that compromise didn't last long once the neighbors from the tea party came down to the scene. Most people in our building are HUGE animal fans and one neighbor is an animal expert (i.e. she works for an animal organization). We ended up moving the squirrels to our apartment, and hosting a squirrel open house as six of our neighbors stopped by. During the "open house," we learned that the new tenants in the building had Comcast installed that day and found a squirrel nest in the cable box. They were hoping the mom would come and find them in the box. Probably wasn't the best idea.

Animal Wildlife Rescue to the rescue!

In the end, it turned out to be a pretty fun and harmless experience. Ben this morning was reflecting on how we were "gifted such an unexpected, but wonderful" squirrel adventure. Apparently his childhood dream was to have a pet squirrel, so of course this all went by too fast he wishes he would've done things differently.

Here are his regrets:

1. Not acting faster

The squirrels were obviously freezing and probably hungry, but we didn't quite know how to care for them. It took us 10 minutes to move them to the garage, another five minutes to involve neighbors, and another 15 minutes to move them to our apartment.

2. Not petting them more

I didn't touch the creatures, but Ben pet them a little bit. I could see he was so conflicted about it. He could almost hear his mom saying not to touch them, but we wanted to hold them so badly. He finally caved and has no regrets about that.

3. Not naming them

Even temporary pets needs a good name. This morning we retroactively named them Alvin, Simon, and Theodore.

4. Not looking up what baby squirrels are called

We still don't know what they're called. Pup, kit, baby?

5. Not taking more video

We took some, but you can always take more.

This is our tribute to the orphan squirrels who are now in wildlife rehabilitation.

And this video pretty much sums up the experience. At the end of the video, Ben says we need to get the squirrels food, to which I promptly said "no!" Twenty minutes later the squirrels were in our neighbor's kitty cage in our apartment with a saucer of milk and chopped up cashews.

Lastly, if you ever find yourself caring for baby squirrels, check out this website. It lists everything we wish we would've known.