Good Karma Day

Jeanine was out in the garden centre talking to a customer today, when i suddenly heard a shriek. Thinking it was a bee, i roared out to see if she was okay. Insisting on coming into the store was a baby squirrel! I tried repeatedly to shoo him out with my foot and he very stubbornly resisted. He WAS going to come in! I finally had to pick up this juvenile doorcrasher and put him in a big ceramic pot to carry him across the road to the park. I gently put him in the bushes and walked away. Phew! Safe! I got halfway down to the store and i hear "ahem, he's following you." Sitting in the grass there is a woman having a smoke and giggling. I grabbed him again, put him in the pot again and took him up the hill again, further... this time i ran. He follows me again, running hell bent for leather with his little tail flaring and his little legs just a pumpin' this time climbing onto my shoe for a little ride and nibbling on my laces. Rinse and repeat. This time i took him to the *other* side of the hill and plunked him in someone's yard. I ran *real* fast. I snuck a look over my shoulder as the woman giggled some more. No squirrel. Yee-haw, he's safe! Yee-haw so am i! I am *so* done with running in hot sun, flapping an apron and carrying a squirrel in a big ceramic pot.

An hour later, i am out in the garden centre and who heads right for me and climbs on my shoe again? "Mommy, mommy, mommy!" NOW i'm getting a WEE bit choked with this prodigal son and wonder what i'm going to do to keep him safe. The flower shop is by a busy road and i don't want to find little Milton squashed in the road or living in the back alley, mugging passersby, having had to turn to a criminal lifestyle due to the shortage of food and Mommy.

Back in the big ceramic pot, oops *bigger* ceramic pot in case he decides to make a break again. What the heck is gonna keep him interested in sticking around, albeit in a yellow bowl that probably to him was as big as the Grand Canyon---(but at least he can see his new Mommy looking in).......Cashews! I sacrificed my cashews for this brat. And boy was he ever grateful after the first round of Bad Squirrel Words!

 

I finally got hold of a Wildlife rehab centre (i'm *hoping* the drinking problem and the denial can be cured :}) that fortunately was only blocks away  . My boss and i bundled him into a squirrel proof cardboard box ----more Bad Squirrel Words--and she took him over. Now he will be cared for, tested for disease, fed properly and finally released somewhere safe in a few days or so. His birth Momma probably got nabbed by a cat or he wandered too far and got lost. And after i gave him the cashews, he wouldn't lift his little face so i could get a picture for the memory book! Ingrate!

 

Milton, i'll miss you.....Mommy loves you, little boy..... 

Comments

[Mary Anne]

I so wish there'd been a video camera on you running pell-mell with a baby squirrel in hot pursuit. The mental image is just too funny for words. Nice that Milton posed for the camera with 'the' bag as a backdrop!!

[Linda]

Ooh, too funny.

[Betty Donahue]

That is just too cute. At least he didn't move into your house and live with you like my two little "wild Kitties" did.

[Ann Christine Dennison]

Such a sweet story, made me smile :-)

[emmy]

A great story

[arlee]

:} I wish there'd been a video camera too! As it was i asked Jeanine to bring out that wonderful bag you see that MaryAnne sent me so generously, as my camera fortuitously was with me for a change, so i could record some of it. He moved so fast though, that the close ups i got were all blurry! Poor Jeanine insisted on stuffing the bag through a one inch crack of the door, because she was so freaked by him :}
I'm going to be looking every squirrel in the eye now and asking its name--although if it climbs on my shoe, i will *know* :}

[Gail V.]

Great story! I had a good laugh. Silly Milton!

[Paulahewitt]

what a great story - I nearly choked on my coffee, laughing. ps like the demin bag too

[materialwitness]

Milton is cute now...
just wait until he returns and eats your roof and wiring!!!
Today they found a baby bear on Pender Street in Vancouver. Bears usually, if not always, stay in North Vancouver.
All I keep wondering is "Where is momma?"
I live a few blocks from Pender and something is on my porch!!!!!!!!!

[materialwitness]

Turned out to be Milton's relative!

[materialwitness]

Milton, you know, is really a rat but less polite.

[arlee]

P, you are too funny :} I take it if you had been in the garden centre here, you would have been the one i was rescueing from certain calamity with a hideous huge scary baby squirrel :}
Your thing on the porch reminds me of a story my dad told me. The parents of a friend of his lived in "Lake Country" in northern-ish Ontario and used to complain about the neighbour's cows getting loose all the time and wandering onto and into property where they had no business being. One night the Mom heard a commotion on the porch and went out with a broom to chase off the bovine delinquents---someone turned on the porch light and she discovered she's been whalin' on a bear!!!!!!!!

[materialwitness]

Did the bear die of fright?

Once I asked my fourteen year old son to chase a raccoon out of the kitchen.
He took the broom and shook it at the raccoon. The raccoon retaliated by taking the broom in hand (paw) and whacking it at my skinny, 6" 5", crackling voice adolescent.
Son ran screaming from the house.

Don't under any circumstance , underestimate a squirrell whose missin' his ma!