Baby Squirrel

Baby Squirrel - Tell me this is not the cutest thing you have ever seen!

Earwig brought this little guy into the house Friday night. It was windy here the last few days, so I imagine he fell out of one of the palm trees. No mama around- no siblings. He was screaming bloody murder! He was so much smaller than these pictures look- just a couple of inches long. I wrapped him up in a warm towel while I looked up on the internet about how to take care of him. We don't have the best wildlife rehabilitation places here (they tend to look down on 'common' species in favour of raptors and things like that), and they never answer on the weekends, so I knew I was going to be going it alone at least until Monday.



According to several websites, he appeared to be a Red Squirrel, and was about 2-3 weeks old. He was in pretty good shape, not dehydrated at all. I followed all the instructions to a tee- cleaned him, kept him warm, gave him pedialite at first, and then a diluted puppy formula at the required intervals. He drank a bit, slept a bit, and peed and pooped a bit- all of which he was supposed to do. I was very proud of him. Most of the time VvonV and I just stared at him, because he was as cute as a bug's butt. His little hands and feet were so delicate, but intricate, and pretty strong. This kept up all Friday night, Saturday, and Saturday evening. He yawned and stretched and slept and made grumbly noises. I was looking forward to being able to show him to the boys.



Sadly, last night he took a turn for the worse. He became lethargic and unresponsive, and finally died. So sad. What a little scrapper he was. VvonV and I were just grateful we'd been able to see how beautiful he was even if it was for such a short time.

The only thing I did not have was antibiotics for him, and many of the sites mentioned that organisms from cats can kill squirrels. All I had to use was Grapefruit seed oil for the cuts. You can see in the photos that he had some lacerations. I need to keep emergency amoxicillin on hand or things like this.

This Is Earwig- He's an albino Siamese Ginger.




I can't really be mad at him. It's not every day baby squirrels fall out of the sky right at your feet. He let us know in Siamese that he wasn't happy at having his gift from the heavens taken away from him.
Poor little squirrel.