Guess who came to visit today?  

I’ll give you a clue. He likes these:

 I was sitting at the picnic table enjoying the spring sunshine and suddenly, he appeared:

 Luckily my camera, and treats for him, were nearby.

It was kind of surprising; so sorry the pic is so blurry.

 

Sometimes a squirrel’s gotta work real hard to crack those nuts. Caught with tongue hanging out! (Sorry if this grosses out anyone; I thought it looked funny).

He became a little shy after all those snapshots and retreated to the shed area. I ran inside and got a piece of carrot for him. He didn’t seem all too pleased with the new treat.

After he sniffed it a bit, he started checking out my fingers for what else I was offering.

Of course I quickly went and found a nut for him. 

Passed the sniff test! (Thanks for the peanut).

 

I should tell you, this wasn’t the first visit from this furry friend. There’s a bit of a story behind it all.

While visiting my in-laws in the fall, tiny baby squirrels were found at the base of one of their huge maple trees. They were so young and that they barely had any hair and their eyes were still shut.

Before I continue, I should also let you know that my mother-in-law is a bit of an animal rescuer. She’s the one everyone goes to in her community when a wounded animal is found. While my husband Dave was growing up they had squirrels, chipmunks, racoons, and even an owl, live and heal with them for a period of time.

Not everyone feels positively towards squirrels; granted they can be pests when it comes to birdfeeders, gardens and inhabiting roofs etc.  My mother-in-law’s neighbour is not of fan of them, and had set squirrel cages out in her backyard… so it was a strong possiblity that these fragile baby squirrels were now orphaned.

Dave’s mom carefully took care of them by feeding them cat’s milk through an eye-dropper every 4 hours (even through the night!), keeping them warm in heated towels and cleaning them regularly. In the meantime Dave was busily building a new home for them in our shed. He built a large cage (five feet high!), with a cosy wood box home, branches, logs etc. for them to live in during the winter.  Eight weeks later we picked them up from Dave’s mom and brought them to their new home.

That was Thanksgiving 2008; since then Dave has been leaving them food and water every day.  We were able to also see them almost daily, as they usually only slept through the day on extremly cold or stormy days.  Not your usual hibernating squirrels I guess!   As you can see, they could definitely stand to miss a meal (lol), and they became quite comfortable with my husband and I.

We decided not to name them, as we didn’t want to become too attached as we were letting them go in the spring… I ended up referring to them as “Him” and “Her”, and as ‘the chippers’ though. (Chippers – A derivative of chipmunk.. I know… they’re not chipmunks… it was just one of those things =)

Once the weather got a bit nicer we left their cage door open so they could come and go as they pleased; and they still came back every night!  I mean, Dave was feeding them every day; who wouldn’t say no to free food?!  Plus their little nest was filled with towel scraps – what wild squirrel has that luxury? =)  They were quite portly after a long winter of little exercise and a diet of nuts and veggies.

By the way, they have expensive taste; their favourite nuts are pecans.

For about 3 weeks now the female squirrel has lived elsewhere.  We know she’s in the vicinity as she comes back every day for a snack or two from us, and stayed a few nights in the shed when we had that short blast of winter again last week.  Here she is with Dave.

The male still sleeps in the shed; although we’re sure it won’t be long now before he finds a tree-top home. He wanders away during the day but comes to visit us every day. (We like to think it’s more than the food… lol!)