gettin’ squirrely

wanna see something cute as fuck?

that’s what two week old baby squirrels look like. and the two of them ended up dropping out of the roof when they replaced a bunch of the carpentry around os’s room. fortunately they weren’t hurt, and according to the googles their moms would come back so we left em out till sundown (they said she wouldn’t seek them at night and to bring them in because of predators) and then pulled them in to set them on a heating pad.

the next day the crew at the house expanded from the three person carpentry crew to the nine person roofing crew and the noise level grew exponentially (more on all that next bit). i talked to some folks in the know who said the mom would have been chased off by the noise and peeps that day and to keep them in so they spent that day chilling on the heating pad on the counter. they said to try leaving them out the next day…but the next day temps dropped to the 40’s, and with them being fur-free and all there was a hypothermia risk so the little buggers went to austin wild life rescue where they could be raised, loved, and released when they were old enough.

we were told by the experts there that the mom was long gone due to all the people and noise and such and that the expression “squirrel moment”, where you get easily distracted, was based in reality as squirrels have horrible short term memories and the mom was long gone and had moved on. this was comforting to the ufc who, thanks to the disneyfication of every living thing, was more worried about the mom pacing around our attic in a total panic wondering what she would do.

the experts missed. the mom was still in the attic.

i got back from taking the babies to the rescue, stopped by the store, and picked up something to make us for lunch. when i took the trash out after said lunch i heard a noise above me. a couple years ago part of the ceiling in our carport had collapsed and i’d replaced it with hardware cloth to keep the neighborhood cats from launching into our attic off the roof of nik’s suv and causing havoc. it was not uncommon for us to see a squirrel on that moments before it disappeared into the attic as their was huge hole in the trim board right by it. but thanks to the work that week that hole was sealed – and there was momma squirrel, glaring down on me.

so i told her what happened, and how they were safe, and we thought she had left. i also said i’d set a snack for her in a safe place, and if she ate it, i would take her to them. i then set a small game trap up with a bowl of squirrel snackage but it never got took.

the next day the ufc noticed some debris on the hood of her x1 and looked up to see the squirrel, shivering in the cold, nibbling on lumber shrapnel from the repairs that week, which let us know she was sealed in there. the budnik had a vet appointment that day but before we left i undid one of the screws on the hardware cloth, peeled the corner back, and set up a strip of tape so if moms went out that way i’d see the tape torn and know. we ran to the vet and back with no sign of exit, but in her defense we did leave her with an eight foot straight drop onto concrete.

squirrel’s ain’t THAT stupid.

we got home, and about fifteen minutes later i heard a thud in the carport. i ran out and the hardware cloth was bent down considerably, the tape torn, and there was a big fat squirrel two feet from me furiously digging in the ground. she pulled up an acorn, scampered up a tree, and snacked…

while she snacked, i sealed the attic back up with the hardware cloth. but we still felt a bit guilty, so i built a “it should do it” shelter out of an old platic tub for the weekend, and nikki actually ordered her new abode on amazon. we’ll see if she’s still around after this hard freeze (she’s been sighted at our place earlier today) and i guess we have a new almost pet.