In the summer of 2008, I was asked by Jerry Burchfield, a friend, to take in 3 baby squirrels that he had discovered while tearing down a wall in his mother’s house.  The babies still had their eyes closed but were fully furred by the time I got them.

I kept them in a plastic container and covered them with shredded paper and hay and kept a heating pad underneath them.  I fed them with Esbilac, which is a special formula made for puppies  After trying several methods of getting the formula into them, I finally decided  on a plain o-ring 5 cc syringe just like the ones I use on my baby birds.  They learned to grab the syringe with both front paws and hang on while they drank, so I had to be careful not to let too much out at once.

The squirrels were named Rocky, Bullwinkle, and Natasha. There were 2 males and 1 female in the bunch and I soon found out that there is quite a difference in the dispositions of the two. Natasha was easy going (except when eating!) and somewhat friendly and could have easily become a family pet.  The boys, on the other hand, were unfriendly and skittish and before they were released, they had begun to bite hard when I had to pick them up.

I eventually moved the squirrels into a large bird cage with lots of tree limb perches and made them a large hanging bed to sleep in, stuffed with shredded paper.

Not long after I moved the cage to the back screened porch, they began to eat less and less formula, and after being bitten hard by the males a few times while cleaning out their cage,  I   decided they had to go.

One cloudy, misty Saturday afternoon, we took the squirrels to a nice park in town and released them.  There were lots of squirrels already there and lots of trees around, from small shrubs to giant oaks.  Rocky and Bullwinkle immediately ran away and sweet little Natasha was reluctant to go so I picked her up one more time and told her goodbye.  Then I gently placed her in a small shrub and left. The weather was warm and I feel like they made it okay, found friends, and had good squirrel lives.