Roof Repair Leads To 3 Orphaned Baby Squirrels

[Paul Michaels]

I've heard more than a few stories of home repair that included unexpected contact with wild animals.

I guess this past weekend was my family's turn. My brother found a 3 pack of baby squirrels in the gutters of his home. Since I have experience working at a vet's office in high school, I was elected to take care of them.

We fed them a few drops of pedialyte re-hydration solution every hour for the first 12 hours and then switched to Esbilac puppy milk replacer every 2-3 hours after that. Luckily on Sunday the local squirrel baby "rehabber" (wildlife rehabilitation expert) came to pick them up.

She said they looked strong and had a very high chance of being successfully released back into the wild. :)

I uploaded some pictures of the squirrel babies on this page -

We'll be removing the gutter guards on the home to discourage the mother from building a new nest there in the future.

Cheers, Paul Michaels Ft. Lauderdale, FL

[DerbyDad03]

Cool pictures.

We had two cats that we raised from kittens by feeding them baby food from an eye dropper every few hours for a couple of weeks. Not as young as those squirrels, but a similar experience. They lived for over 18 years, so we must have done something right.

We once had a squirrel with MS or some other muscular decease that used to hang around our house. It would sit up on it's hind quarters and fall over while it tried to eat. All the other squirrels picked on it while it tried to find food. My wife felt sorry for it and used to throw little bits of food on the porch so it could eat.

One day it decided it wanted an upgrade and tried to get into the house when my wife opened the screen door. She quickly closed the door, trapping the squirrel half-in and half-out. Remember the cats I mentioned earlier? Picture a deformed squirrel caught in screen door, my wife holding it closed 'cuz she doesn't know which way the squirrel will go if she opens it (and afraid to kick it with her bare feet in case it's rabid or something) and 2 cats hissing and spitting right behind her.

I came running when I heard the commotion (luckily wearing sneakers) and "nudged" the squirrel out of the door with my foot. It was quite an hilarious situation.

[gfretwell]

My thought is you could have put them back somewhere nearby and mom would have taken care of them. I found some baby rabbits when I was moving a plant and the momma rabbit found them and took them away to a new hole..