Saving Squirrels with my Sweet Momma

My mom and I helped out several wild animals together, including raising orphaned squirrels.

I’ve had the honor of helping out a lot of animals in my life, even outside my 15+ years of working in the veterinary and animal care field. It’s almost as though creatures in need find me more often than the average person, but it’s probably really that I am more tuned in to the nonhuman life around me and therefore more likely to notice a creature in distress - like the lost little mole I scooped up from under a car in a grocery store parking lot on a dark rainy day and brought to the safety of a park. Or the monarch butterfly we brought inside after it was beat up by a sudden summer storm, letting her regain her strength and fly away (but not before naming her Dotty). How about bottle-raising two abandoned baby squirrels and successfully reintroducing them to the wild once they were grown? Each of those ‘rescues’ was done with the help and support of my Sweet Momma. I credit her with my deep love for animals and my undeniable need to help keep them safe. It’s practically pathological, folks.

Here I am, ‘helping’ this puppy. Look at that grip.

While it’s the most recent out of the examples I gave, the baby squirrel adventure happened about 14 years ago. I was living back in the Midwest in the town where I was raised, the result of crashing and burning after my heart dog died suddenly when we were living on our own for the first time on the East Coast. My parents moved houses and were letting me stay in the home I lived in with them since I was 14 rent-free while I got back on my feet. There was a huge, glorious Linden tree right outside the front door. It was so big it almost completely obscured the split-level house from the road, the branches creating a canopy over the majority of the yard right up to the house itself.

I set this scene because of how I found these squirrel babes. Guys, all I did was step out the front door and right there, literally on the welcome mat of the concrete stoop was a baby squirrel - welcome, indeed! He wasn’t a neonate, but still too young to be out of the nest for long. retrospectively it looks like he must have been about 5 weeks old. Think a kitten old enough to have its eyes open and wonder around but still wobbly on it’s feet and dependent on nursing for food. I carefully picked up the babe and it immediately tried nursing on the tip of my finger.

There was no sign of mom. I don’t remember spotting a squirrel nest in the branches above me, but as much as I’d like to picture a momma squirrel wrapped in a shawl, purposely placing her kit at my door knowing I’d be able to take care of him, he must have fallen out of the tree. I did a quick sweep of the yard and sure enough, there was another babe in the grass nearby. We all know (we all know, right??) that wild animal babies have the best chance of survival with their mother, so the first thing I did was place them at the base of the tree to see if she would come back for them. She didn’t. I could only assume they were abandoned and maybe something…undesirable…happened to mom.

“We don’t know what we’re doing.” - Baby Squirrels

Time to call my mom! After relaying the story, we decided to bring the kits the 4 blocks to my parents’ house (small towns, amiright?) and make a plan. They appeared to be male, and we named them Henry and Abner because my mom loved old-fashioned names, and naming things is just fun. I did some internet research, which told me I could safely use a particular brand of puppy formula, but remember, it was 2012 and while it didn’t seem like it at the time, there wasn’t nearly as much information about obscure topics like what to feed the random baby squirrels you found in your yard as there is today. Turns out this answer was right-ish as far as an emergency, temporary food, but we should not have used it for the duration of their time as nursing babes. Had I known I should have made my own special squirrel formula or ordered some from a specialty store, you know I would have. The risk with puppy formula is diarrhea and therefore dehydration and possibly death because not all the ingredients and nutritional levels are compatible with a squirrel’s dietary needs.

And one of the kits indeed did not survive. I think it was too early on for the formula to have been the culprit. I wonder if perhaps little Abner was the one who fell from the tree and landed on the concrete step outside my door, he seemed less active than his brother from the start. He passed in my hands while I was trying to feed him. I desperately hope he didn’t aspirate, but I really can’t be sure. My sensitive Momma cried and insisted we bury Abner in a little antique box she had among her collectibles. It was tough and disheartening. Serendipitously I ended up finding a third kit in my yard, obviously from the same litter, when I went back home after losing Abner (and still no sign of their mom). This baby was female and we decided to call her Halo.

I, too, am cringing at the quality of these 2012 cell phone photos.

Both Halo and Henry did excellently on the formula, eagerly eating from a dropper, gripping it with their little hands, sitting up on their haunches, but it was probably helpful that they were so close to transitioning to solid foods. We made an enclosure for them with branches and pinecones, and cozy little pouch for them to sleep in. Obviously we snuggled the babies often as well. I remember them climbing all over me, burrowing under my shirt during a cuddle sesh on the couch. I’m sure I took video on my blackberry (anyone else miss having a physical keyboard on my phone, by the way?), but that thing’s long gone.

The Kits practicing how to squirrel.

The enclosure went from the basement to the outdoors as Henry and Halo got a bit older and started exploring ‘real’ food. Eventually it was just there as a safety net and remained open for them to come and go as they pleased. It wasn’t long before they didn’t need that safety anymore and they fully integrated into the world of neighborhood squirrels. By the time Halo and Henry were out on their own I had moved back to New England, but my parents told me they’d frequent the trees near their house and even allowed some petting for a while. As far as I know they lived full squirrel lives.

That said, I don’t recommend trying to raise a squirrel the way we did. Looking back it was a pretty shoot-from-the-hip, uneducated venture. If there is a wildlife rehab within a reasonable distance, absolutely contact them for transfer. If you find a grievously injured squirrel, remember that even licensed companion animal veterinarians can humanely euthanize an injured wild animal even if they are not equipped to treat them. Sometimes this is the best option to limit suffering if nothing else can be done. We got relatively lucky with our experience and I cherish it - how many people can say they’ve kissed a baby squirrel? Totally a club I’m proud to be a member of.