Well, it has been a week and two days since we took in the baby fox tree squirrel that had either been abandoned or separated from its mother.
The first two days she needed hand feeding, warmth and a safe place to sleep. She was almost catatonic the first day. Gradually, she perked up, her coordination improved and her food desires went from goat milk to solids.
By the weekend, warm weather and her improved motor skills made it possible for her to handle being outside in a wire cage.
The past two days she spent the whole day outside and yesterday I watched her talking squirrel, via her waving tail, with another fox squirrel in the yard.
Last night she slept outside in her box in the cage.
Today, I opened the door and gave her the opportunity to go out into the world.
It is a hard thing to let go, but this afternoon Teeny is up in the tree eating elm seeds with the other squirrels. She isn’t very high and I did see her take a tumble, but she went right back up in the tree.
The neighbors who found her and delivered her to the doorstep thought I should keep her as a pet. But a squirrel is a wild creature. If she is able, and she is, then she should be out in the world. It also would be illegal to keep her. But disregarding the legality, it wouldn’t be ethical, it would be putting my desire to own something over its right to live a wild life.
Anyway, Teeny is back where she belongs. [OK, she doesn’t really belong here because she is an introduced species, but...] She has will to live and desire to be free. Will I put out food for her? Probably, if she comes looking. But if she is anything like the hummingbirds of this summer, she will do fine on her own.
Well I had planned on tackling this topic head-on.
Fox squirrels can be hooligans when it comes to bird feeders. They eat bird seed and bird feeders. I can’t stand them.
I have one in my bathroom right now.
That’s right. A baby fox squirrel is sleeping on a heating pad in a big box in my bathroom. Fox squirrels are an introduced species in the Los Angeles area. Their territory is expanding; they are smart, adaptable and prolific. They are not a species I support protecting or feeding, at least not here. They will prey on bird eggs and they drive off native ground squirrels.
Usually, I try to let nature work. I cheer when the red-tailed hawk plucks a fox squirrel off the neighbor’s roof for dinner. When I first saw the baby squirrel on Saturday, I knew it was much younger than any I had seen on the ground before. But it seemed to be able and scavenging for food. I warned the dog off, and let the tike hunker down for the night in the sword fern.
Yesterday, Inali found it again, still in the fern. Again, it seemed to be all right. We tried to catch it, but it was able to avoid us. Nature is the best mother, so we set out some milk soaked bread, but let the little one go its way.
This morning it was across the street. Last night, it didn’t sleep in the fern protected from the evening chill. This morning, the construction crew at the neighbor’s was well meaning but frightening to a teeny squirrel.
Where do the neighbors bring the injured, the strange and the lost? Here.
band-tailed pigeon
Inali saving hummingbird
So now I have a baby squirrel tucked into warm rags. Now that I know it is going to survive, I’m off to get formula for it.
Yes, I am raising the enemy. But it is awfully cute.
From rainforests to deserts biodiversity has become an important environmental issue. But what is biodiversity? In simple language, it means the variety of living things. Rainforests are home to many different kinds of plants and animals and therefore have great biodiversity.
But biodiversity isn’t just something that happens far away in remote or exotic places. No matter where you live, biodiversity is all around you. You are a part of it.
Whether you live in the city or the countryside, you share your environment with plants and animals. The animals may be small, the plants may be struggling to grow between cracks in concrete sidewalks, but still they are there trying to survive. Who are these neighbors we often do not notice? That is what the Backyard Biodiversity Project is all about.
Around the world biologists and botanists are documenting the types of animals and plants in distant jungles and remote badlands. In many places, they are discovering plants and creatures that no one has identified before or they are redicovering living things we thought had disappeared. But who is looking in your backyard?
Today I started documenting the plant and animal species here on one small piece of the planet.
Field Notes:
This morning Zone 17, the driveway . I thought the first species would be a plant, but right now a fox squirrel is looking at me beligerently from the zone. She is the first living thing recorded on this first day – an alien species, aggressive and thriving. Above me a mourning dove watches from the phone line, calm, native and wondering what I'm doing on the driveway on my hands and knees looking at snail shells and spider webs. It's a good start.
