For most folks squirrels are just there. A fleeting presence seen from the corner of the eye, or spotted balanced on a branch or power line, watching, giving you the old prayer paws as they perhaps decide if you are a nut or not. Or dead on the roadside and instantly dismissed from your thoughts. Unremarkable and unconsidered.
I have argued for the glory and wonder of squirrels before on this site. The sheer numbers of trees they plant every year makes them admirable, even heroic. Or if you are of a capitalist bent consider this: Americans spend over 5 billion dollars a year on feeding wild birds--and some fraction of that goes to, yes, intentionally feeding squirrels. Then there are the uncounted number of fellow citizens whose living derives from the design, manufacture, and sale of squirrel-proof feeders. Devices that can cost from $40 to over $200, and in the end prove to be at best squirrel resistant because squirrels are exceptionally clever and more manically persistent than telemarketers. If you are by some strange circumstance the sort who thinks Bambi was wasted venison, well, squirrels can and do become sustenance for other critters such as hawks, owls, foxes and coyotes. The ones who fail to cross the road are flat snacks for the usual scavengers.
My wife and I have rehabbed wildlife for about 17 years, and we really dig squirrels. Over that span we have raised at least a couple hundred squirrels, chiefly gray and black squirrels (blacks are a morph of grays), red squirrels, and the occasional flying squirrel. We also get some chipmunks, but we know those little bastards are not really squirrels, and so do they, which explains the chip they have on their shoulders. We're talking squirrels here, about the basics of raising them up, getting them release-ready, and sending them out to plant trees, raise families, and in spite of the care we take choosing release sites, bedevil a certain number of humans. By the way, this is volunteer work, running on donations and our own income.
So, on Squirrel Appreciation Day, I offer a bit about raising squirrels. This is about gray/black squirrels; reds do the same things, only faster, as if they were on speed. We have had them come at most stages of their early life, generally as orphans. The newborns are tiny, maybe fifteen grams, the size of the end of your finger, nearly hairless, eyes closed, ears not yet unfolded, yet already sporting tiny sharp nails. They're born ready to climb even though they can't see where the hell they are going. We've had juveniles just short of their eyes opening arrive, having been found blindly climbing down or at the bottom of a tree searching for the mother who has not come for them for a few days, most likely because she is dead. They come in dehydrated and malnourished, quite often partially bald due to alopecia. We have nursed juvie squirrels who left or were forced out the nest before they were really ready, again dehydrated and starved.
Raising squirrels, even healthy ones, is hands-on work. They are nursed about every two hours, using a 1cc syringe with a special nipple. This is a slow and exacting process because they are prone to aspirating in their crazed greed for milk. Around here in squirrel season the first feeding is around 8 in the morning, the last feeding 10 or later at night, the number of feedings (average around eight per day for the first few weeks) times the amount per feeding hitting the mark for how much one their age/weight should get each day. This is not milk from the dairy case, we use a special dry small mammal formula mixed with water in small quantities since it doesn't keep all that long once mixed. The milk is warmed, then provided very slowly while watching for snorking or nose bubbles, warnings of aspiration. Early on you **gently** push the plunger to keep the flow going. Later on you have to restrain the plunger to keep them from sucking the syringe dry.
The hands-on doesn't end there. Each baby has to be manually stimulated to pee and poop after feeding-- sometimes before if the critter is fussy. This pee and poop is examined as closely as a sports replay or spread of tarot cards. Dark urine, or urine tinged with blood are warnings. Soft, runny poops are a warning sign as well, as is no poop--a possible sign of dangerous constipation. This degree of poop scrutiny is crucial because with most wildlife, mammal and avian alike, things happen fast. A baby can go from doing fine, to having a problem, to dying in a matter of hours.
So we go through all of that with each squirrel every couple hours, and sometimes we have a dozen or more squirrels at once, and there are usually two, sometimes three breeding seasons. While this is happening we may also have several baby/juvie birds to be fed and tended to at the same time. For half of the year both of us can't be away at the same time for more than two hours. We don't really have lives. But we've usually got poop a'plenty.
The squirrels grow quickly, and as they grow they get incrementally more milk per feeding using larger syringes. We put alternative food such as nuts, rodent block, grains, fruits and veg in with them almost from the outset, and over time they will chow down on this stuff more and more. When that happens we can cut back on the number of feedings. Not long after their eyes open, at about 4 weeks, they can pee and poop on their own. We provide a litter box. This does not discourage them from crapping in their food, in their sleep sacks, and on you while feeding them.
When they get old enough they are moved to an outside cage that gives them room to climb, play, hide food, and acclimatize to the great outdoors. By then they may only be getting milk three to five times a day. That means going into the cage with them, trying to feed critters that will not wait their turn--that will swarm you. If you are creeped out by the thought of being locked inside a cage with several squirrels climbing all over you, leaping on and off you, sitting on your head, investigating your pockets, squirming into your shirt front or sleeves, or up your pants leg, then this is not a task for you. It is the most divine madness and mayhem. It can make you crazy, and it can have you laughing to the point of helplessness.
Once they are fully self-feeding, their tails properly bushy, capable getting into whole nuts and jumping six feet, they are ready for release. By then they have begun wilding up, growing wary, unwilling to be handled. One more sign they are ready for the wild.
A note on that jumping thing: a squirrel is not quite a foot tall, yet it can easily leap over six feet. Can you leap six times your height--over thirty feet? Do your back feet turn backward so you can climb down a tree face first? Can you chew a hole in a walnut? Hang from your hind feet to eat upside down? Literally run up a tree? Do your front teeth grow continuously? Can you bury and remember the location of several thousand nuts? Are you sacred to Artemis? I thought not.
Final notes: Squirrels are not meant to be pets. Young squirrels can purr. It's soft and buzzy-rapid, but it there. We don't purr while holding and nursing baby squirrels, but we are in our own odd way content.
So there you go. Joni Mitchell could have easily sung: I've looked at squirrels from both sides now, from up and down and still somehow, it's squirrel illusions I recall, I really don't know squirrels at all.
We should all get to know squirrels better, the better to appreciate them.