Little Guy

Today Molly sent me the following photos and said they were from 8 years ago.  This is when we saved Little Guy.

In 2014 we noticed there was a massive amount of squirrel nests in our front tree in Athens, Georgia.

One Saturday morning as we slept in with our windows open, we heard the most horrible little screaming noise outside our front window.  I looked out and saw three baby squirrels laying on the cement steps.  I knew this screaming would attract our cats so I ran out to save them.  One didn't make the fall, Binx got one of them, but there was one left.  The mom was no where in sight. We didn't know what to do with him.  We locked the cats in the house, I threw some bird seed near it thinking it could eat that.  We were hoping the mom would come get him but she never did. We  decided to put him in a big knot hole in a different tree.  It slept there peacefully for hours.

We heard the screaming again later that day.  Little Guy was out of the knot in the tree, clenching on and screaming for his mother.  It was really quite sad.  He didn't eat bird seed but Molly gave him avocado and he loved it! That kept him quite.

I had remembered a colleague of mine saying she once found baby squirrels and knew the woman who owned the flower shop rescued squirrels.  I called the rescuer right away and she told me to bring him over.  Once she met him she said he was a girl and couldn't take her because she was too big for the babies she was nursing back to health at the moment.  But she gave me all the supplies to take care of him.  She stocked me up with formula and a dropper to feed him with.  I was sad she couldn't take him but was determined to take care of him and get him back into the wild.  We had already named him Little Guy so he was still a he for us.

It was like having a baby again.  I would try not to wake him when it slept so I could get things done.  When he was awake, he needed my full attention.   We kept him in a homemade cage on the screened-in porch and watched as he grew bigger and bigger.  It was time to build him a house to put up in the woods in the back yard.  He LOVED it.  The top flipped open so I could check on him and also put clean bedding in.

When I would check on him, I would walk up to his house and call for him and he would stick his little head out and then run and jump on me.  He would be so excited. Probably about the nuts I always had.  One day when we were away from home for the day, I asked Molly to check on him.  It was dark so she took the flashlight with her.  She climbed the ladder, lifted the lid and he wasn't there.  She looked up in the tree with the flashlight and there was a possum right there staring at her!  She hurried down the ladder and came silently screaming home to tell us about her scary experience.  I was worried about Little Guy but he was back home the next morning with no possum in sight. 

I was always worried he wasn't getting enough water. So I made sure he did.

He would sit with me in the swing. I was really fond of him.

He was getting bigger and bigger and I didn't have to check on him as often.  It got to the point where I would go to his house and he wouldn't be there.  I would call for him and he would come running from many backyards away.  Sometimes he wouldn't come at all.  Finally, I was no longer needed and I imagined he found his mate and lived happily ever after.

Molly knew how much I missed him so she painted him on a rock.