Yesterday morning I noticed Julius, one of the outdoor cats was stalking something in the back yard. I went out, yelled, "no birds", I don't bother to see if that is in fact what they are after. I just teach all cats to run like hell when I yell "no birds".
Anyway went out & there was a little baby rock squirrel by the back wall. It was very lethargic, growled a little but other than that just laid there. I yelled for John to bring a cage. Put it in the cage, came back in the house & when I checked on him, he was gone. Guess the openings in the cage were larger than we thought, or he was smaller.
Looked out & Julius is after something on the porch........guess who? I picked him up, no growl this time. I got a syringe of water & he latched onto that like he was really thirsty.
Right now he is living in a small hav-a-heart trap, on a towel, in our bathroom. Our house has an open floor plan & 4 cats...............do you see a problem? I had him with me at the computer yesterday afternoon until Moogee "discovered" him.
He prefers cow's milk with karo over kitten formula, & has fleas. Ugh! John went to town yesterday & when he called asked if I wanted him to get some flea powder? John is a wonderful person in a lot of ways, but sometimes his animal knowledge gets short circuited. Of course my knowledge is rather dated sometimes, they might have a flea powder now you can use on "nestlings", but I don't know of any. So far I've "captured" 3, & haven't seen any "cavorting" since yesterday afternoon. Maybe they are gone, I hope so, I hate fleas.
Over the last few days we had found 2 other little guys. Lysa found one out by the pens & I put it down a squirrrel hole, close to where she found it. The other one John found dead about 60 feet from where the other one was.
We're thinking the mother probably got killed, (snake?) & they were close enough to coming out of the nest to make the effort. Wish I had known when Lysa found the first one, I would have fed it too.
Have no idea how long he'll have to be fed. We'll be hauling Mocha & Tucker to Las Cruces this afternoon, I guess he'll be going with us, so I can feed him every couple of hours or so.
John wants to name him Pascagula, have no idea how to spell it & neither does my spell checker. Anyway Ray Stevens sang a song about the Mississippi Squirrel Revival, in Pascagula, Mississippi a LONG time ago. I told John if we name it that, it will have to have a nickname, Pasca or Gula. I'm not going to try to say the whole thing on a regular basis.
5 comments:
Pascagoula. How about calling him Packy?
Maybe Skeeke, that's what I named all my rodent pets when I was a kid.
Have been hesitant to write because was afraid he may have not pulled through. Just saw your comment, so sounds like he's still with us (happy dance). Just don't forget that our friend Eleanor is very knowledgeable about squirrels, if you have any questions. Remember she raised Bucky...."the love of her life".
http://www.squirreltales.org/
Don't know if you saw this when you were researching diets.
Thanks Patti, wish it wasn't the week-end, so I could find that formula.
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