Friday, May 8, 2009

Bonkers the rehabbed Squirrel & tutorials

A lot of you know that it is a "zoo" around my house & that we have rehabbed an orphaned baby squirrel we named Bonkers.

Bonkers came to us in our back yard at the end of last fall, the tiniest little thing (According to a rehab manual he was about 5 weeks old)  He inserted himself in our lives by hopping on top of my husband's foot over and over, demanding he pick him up. At first we were running from the little thing because we had never seen a squirrel behave this way. We had no idea he was a tiny baby at that time. Since we do have exotic pets, I called our vet and talked to him and he said it was ok to pick him up etc. It turns out that squirrels are usually up for a few hours in the morning and then again in the afternoon/evening but they nap most of the mid day in nests. Well this little guy had been running frantic in our yard for a couple days. Come to find out he did not have a  nest, so he just didn't know what to do. When I found out squirrels at his age can not even climb a tree (not till they are 12 weeks old!) and he was not even old enough to hold up his own tail, I felt so bad. We went out and picked him up, he literally fell over, passed out from exhaustion! I will have to dig those pictures up.

We set him up a nest in an old Bunny hutch and started learning how to raise a baby squirrel. It was very important to me that we did it in a way that he could go back to being a real squirrel when he was old enough.

Well I am happy to say Bonkers is a "teen" now and we released him to live with other squirrels (in our back yard LOL) and he set up house in the 100 year old Maple tree in our back yard.  I can't say that he is a "normal" squirrel because he thinks I am his Mommy and he comes to be fed by me on a schedule twice a day. We play the peanut game in the late afternoon. The other squirrels "laugh" at him because his version of stashing food is to place it in my son's wagon or my flower pots instead of deep burying it in the dirt LOL Of course they come along later and eat all that has hidden.
He is quite demanding, I left the peanut game to come in the house and I came back to see him waiting for me at eye level on the screen door yesterday. You can see avocado is his favorite veggie, I was LOL that he had little avocado chunks on his nose.

I am working on the candle caddy and  popsicle card picture tutorials and hope to get them posted this evening/tomorrow morning.  I will edit them in the original posts for the project.

Have a GREAT day!

1 comment:

Stephaniescraps said...

I love your wonderful story about Bonkers!! That is so sweet. That is also a great scrapbook (?) page.