Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2010

Squirrel survives my rescue

In a week when Raleigh shook with news of a high-profile slaying, bare-knuckle school board politics and the annual frenzy of ACC basketball, my empathy got hijacked by a baby squirrel.

He was wriggling in the dirt under an oak tree in the backyard, eyes shut tight like a new puppy's, heart beating against a set of toothpick ribs.

I watched him for a few hours, waiting for mama squirrel or a bushy-tailed grim reaper. But the world kept turning, indifferent as a stone.

There really wasn't any room in my house for a furry orphan. I've already got a toddler with a persistent cough, an elderly Labrador retriever with gas, plus a ferocious ankle-biting Chihuahua who is going to get me sued one day.

On top of that, my wife, Amber, detests squirrels. She swerves to hit them in the road. She yells "Get out of here, rat!" when they scamper across the front porch, and my son Sam has learned to do the same. Our house would be no substitute for the warm bosom of a mother rodent.

Still, I couldn't let nature take its brutal course. We humans, after all, are meddlers.

"If he dies," Amber warned, with Sam looking eagerly on, "Mr. Squirrel went to heaven. That's our story."

Mr. Squirrel likely spent the first four hours of our kinship ardently wishing he had fallen into somebody else's yard.

I gave him low-fat milk through a plastic syringe, and if you believe any of the 4,000 squirrel rescue sites that I didn't bother to consult, I might as well have lit Mr. Squirrel on fire. I apologize to the squirrel kingdom for putting their infant son at risk of dehydration, diarrhea, death and other terrifying "D" words.

Chastened by squirrel lovers in the know, I switched to Pedialyte, that sugar-electrolyte concoction you give to infants. We just happened to have a bottle of the cherry-flavored variety, which I syringed into Mr. Squirrel's tiny mouth only to watch in horror as it came bubbling back out of his nostrils. Was I killing Mr. Squirrel? Should I have left him in the mud?

At this point, Sam chimed in, impressed by the spectacle. He wanted some pink juice, too.

Having botched mealtime, I moved on to the knotty problem of housing. Inside was out. Outside was cold.

So I fashioned the squirrel a bed out of a cloth napkin and a garden glove, and I set him in a plastic box on top of the water heater. Oh, don't gasp. I left the light on for him, and I sang him a little goodnight song.

In the morning, after giving the squirrel another nostril wash, I did what should been Step One. I called Kimberly Ashby, wildlife rehabber in West Raleigh, and I drove Mr. Squirrel to her capable hands.

He was still wriggling when she picked him up, but I was more than a little embarrassed when she announced, "He looks terrible!" She gave him an antibiotic and set him down on a blanket with two other little wrigglers who had just arrived.

Because Mr. Squirrel was so dehydrated, she wouldn't give me odds on his growing up to see adult squirreldom, but I left considering the whole episode a victory. Her house just felt like a place where critters magically mend.

We told Sam that the squirrel's mommy came to take him home, and this was the story he wanted to hear. But as I wrapped up my chapter as squirrel rescuer, I thought of these words from W.H. Auden:

"About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along"

So in the end, I guess, while walking dully along, be watchful and mind the little sufferers.