CRUNCHâ€I felt my foot crush another peanut hidden below the corner of the rug. Several times a day this happens. And then there are the walnuts in my shoes, the acorns under the pillows on the couch and more peanuts under my bed covers. Several weeks ago I had to deal with the rolls of toilet paper being unraveled and streaming for 30 feet across the house. This only continues because the nights are cold outside and I am a sentimental pushover.
Back in September I got a call from a woman about an orphan, baby squirrel. Well, of course, I took him. Inside the house he lived in a carry cage fully equipped with a heating pad and lots of bedding. Every few hours this little tyke was fed his formula. Quickly he grew. After about a month he along with his heating pad was moved to a larger cage. And each day I spent lots of time allowing him the run of the house and playing with him. Soon I just left the door to the cage open and each evening he would return to his warm nest there.
On one of his ears he developed a small scab that temporarily caused that ear to look crinkled. Naming him, thus, became easy and he became KRINKLES. His ear soon healed and now is completely normal.
Introducing him to the outside turned out to, also, be very easy. I simply moved the open cage to my outside deck. By plugging his heat pad into an outside outlet he had a warm place to which to return. Mission Accomplished, I thought. Krinkles would now acclimate himself to the outside world and gradually disappear in the wild world of squirreldom. Well, that is what I thought. Krinkles had other ideas.
For me to ignore the begging face of Krinkles pressed against the glass of the sliding door to the deck was impossible. He loves to come inside, to play, to check out his big house and to continue building an inside nest for himself.
Hence, the era of long trailers of toilet paper continues. Krinkles will grab hold of the end of a roll in the bathroom and start running for the other side of the house. In a flash there will be 30 or more feet of the stuff weaving around the house. He will then bunch up as much as he can and dart off for the pantry. Here on the top shelf he constructed his white, fluffy nest. But since the nights were still mild at the beginning of this construction I made him spend most of his time outside. After all, he still had his home with a heating pad outside.
As it turns out even this was not enough for Krinkles because when I gave him more toilet paper outside he simply carried it off to a still unknown spot where he built another nest. On more mild nights he now uses this unknown nest.
Outside I provide him with a plethora of food, grain, acorns, walnuts, almonds and peanuts. Little by little he not only eats them, but takes them one by one and plants them all over the ground. So it is completely natural that he does the same thing inside. And this is why I find these nuts planted under my rug, in my bed, behind the pillow of the couch and in my shoes.
He now knows that almost anytime he presses his face against the door I will relent and bring him in the house. We do have a series of games we play. And with the night time temperatures now dropping below 20 degrees I have been allowing him to sleep in his pantry nest inside the house.
He knows where I sleep so with the crack of dawn Krinkles will come upstairs, crawl under the covers of my bed and wake me up by wanting to play. We do this till I get up, dress and carry him downstairs whence I put him outside again.
What a softie I am.
Oh, by the way Joel has two parrots. One is a mere eavesdropper, the other a gossip. You never know which is which when you hear a squak!!! Make sure the gossip is not on his shoulder. One is male and the other female but I can remember which is which--the gossip or the eavesdropper!! Sorry!
Thanks for sharing your story Joel, and thank you Norman for posting the pictures of Krinkles! Animals do have a way of stealing your heart (along with toilet paper)!!
