Rescuing creatures: hazards and rewards
Idaho Family Makes The Lunatic List
By Jill Kuraitis, 7-26-10
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| Pinball got his name because he zigzags through the trees. | |
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It’s official. We are the crazy neighbors.
We’ve made the lunatic list because we take in strays. Okay, mostly I take in strays. But the family wouldn’t go along as much as they do if they didn’t like it, too.
From time to time, a stray person will live with us awhile and recover from something. One-legged ducks have paddled in our backyard stream, last winter a fox with a cough slept on our front porch at night, and we have to keep an eye on a stunningly stupid mourning dove who sleeps where the dogs could eat her. We’ve raised a duck, rescued baby birds, pulled screaming orphaned baby squirrels out of trees, and had two raccoons run rampant through our house because the dog door was open. A shoe box or cat carrier with some recovering creature in it is pretty normal around our already crowded two-cat, two-dog household.
After it rains, my daughter and I both pick up earthworms from sidewalks and gutters and throw them back in the dirt. I learned this valuable skill from my mother, who learned it from hers.
Which is to say that lunacy is inherited.
The latest stray incident which is giving some neighbors the horrors is all about your ordinary backyard squirrels. Four orphan babies were raised by a local rescue group volunteer named Rebecca, through a great outfit called Animals in Distress. The babies grew up, needed a habitat, and Boise’s squirrel lady, Toni Hicks, called me to find out how many squirrels I was feeding this year and whether there was room in my habitat for more.
Toni and I are old friends. We met at a lunatics support group.
The squirrel cage containing Pinball, Scrabble, Frank and Fred was delivered on a Saturday, and we had instructions to put it under a tree for two weeks and let the Fab Four get used to the sights and smells and sounds around them. This was lots of fun, as the critters would chatter and chirp, eat nuts from your hand, and perform circus tricks when neighbors happened by. 
But their performances grew more frantic, and they started holding up little signs that said FREE THE SQUIRRELS.
So Rebecca showed up a week early with a squirrel box to put in a tree, and the males in the household nonchalantly sidled out to the garage in hopes of getting there first. Arriving at the same time, they brandished a ladder and tools in manly fashion and proceeded to argue with each other about the best way to handle the installation. The merits of various bolts and fasteners was a hot topic, and when one guy would say the other was dead-ass wrong and the proper hardware could be easily found BY A GUY WHO KNEW WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT, the latest guy who thought he knew what he was talking about stomped off to the hardware store.
(Honeybear didn’t care who won as long as she could stick her nose in the squirrel business.) 
Friends happened by, and at one point there were nine people in the yard. I can’t think why I didn’t serve G&Ts, but it was only noon.
When one of the Males finally installed the box in a nice fluffy pine behind ivy vine camoflage, Rebecca opened a little hole in the cage and Frank immediately took off. Fred wasn’t far behind, but Pinball and Scrabble were napping and didn’t move. Husband insisted on taking smart-phone video of the very moment of squirrel emancipation, and proudly bored anyone nearby with it. (“Yes, I can see that is a squirrel cage standing still.”) Neighbors and friends stood around pointing and going, “Yup! There he is!” until the thrill was gone. 
An hour later, with everything quiet, Pinball and Scrabble made their escape.
Now, three weeks later, the older Frank and Fred have moved to a different tree, but the little guys live in the squirrel box and come to our calls. They’ll eat from our hands or sit on our laps or shoulders on the deck. They like to be scratched behind the ears while they eat, and to be petted as much as possible. Head Squirrel Pinball likes to taunt the dogs, and Scrabble enjoys a good leap from the deck railing to a shoulder to look for food in our hair.
Some people think squirrels are pests, and others find them creepy. But I love the little beasties, and hope to always have them – or some other critter who will sit on my lap and chatter – in my life.
If you find an orphaned critter of any sort, Animals in Distress is there to help. But fair warning: soon you’ll be trolling the google for 100 pounds of peanuts, delivered.
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Comments
However, another member of my household opined that a more accurate article would demonstrate that there is only one family in Idaho that is NOT on the lunatic list.
Gawd help us if those folks ever turn up.
I hear the other two. Maybe just some folks walking down the alley from Old Town to the store. I can tell when the local squirrels are running the top rail of the cyclone fence that encircles the back yard. The miniwolf pack goes crazy.
Three of us with property backing up towards the creek put in cyclone fences years ago to deter the homeless, the winos, and seasonal workers using the creek for a summer home. This is Oregon, and Willamette Valley Oregon, where wind and rain put a lean on a board fence in time, and they all rot away. The wind passes through the cyclone and galvanized does not rot like wood. But, I suppose like Boise, where the population is pilgrims, new immigrants from here, there, and far away, cyclone fences come with some sort of penal memory or institutional dislike of order. Better a sagging wood fence than an upright cyclone. And cats won't walk the top rail like they do on wood fences. Too hot on a summer day. Too cold in winter. The dogs are done barking and have come in the house. Time to put them in their kennel box and go do something, even if it is wrong. This waiting for a crop to ripen gets old. Monitor water and wait.
By the way, my bird feeding has attracted a number of Eurasian collared doves. More all the time. None last year, and a dozen nesting and doing their not so silent invasion of the neighborhood. That they flew here from somewhere way southeast and now have taken up residence in sort of interesting. An addition to feral rock doves, missing passenger pigeons, much lower populations of bandtail pigeons, and they run mourning doves off the feed. I watch them do that. Bully boys to mourning doves, the native resident doves. But those are birds and birds can get away with that. The mourning doves don't have an ACLU to defend them, or a TeaParty to tell their story. Just another comment from the lunatic fringe.
When I wrote this in 2010, Toni Hicks was still taking in squirrels, but she has mostly retired.
I would caution you against the idea of having a "pet" squirrel. They die if you put them in cages, and it's cruel. The only way to have a friendly tree-squirrel who will eat from your hand, etc, is to have a litter of half-grown babies released in your yard, as I described. Because they have been hand-raised, usually in a foster home, they start out being friendly. If you keep feeding them by hand they will keep coming back, but eventually they go wild and won't come near you anymore. Then you get another litter! Call Animals in Distress in Boise.