Blue Ridge Parkway

This past weekend we traveled to Asheville to see the leaves change color. I took this off one of the stops along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The weather was perfect and the colors were gorgeous.

Bebeh Squirrel

The weather was quite nice yesterday late afternoon and DH and I decided to spend a little time enjoying our yard. We heard a shrill noise coming from one of our trees and could not quite put a finger on whether it was a bird or what. Walking around we figured out what tree it was coming from, a large oak near the back of the house. We were standing under it looking up and an object dropped on the grass under the tree in front of us and a large owl flew away. It was a baby squirrel, and it was what was making that shrill noise. The poor thing. I wasn't sure it would survive such a large drop and we stood there not quite knowing what to do. We thought about it for a while and could see the little guy was still breathing. We stepped away a ways to see if his mom was coming to get him but after several minutes, nothing happened. After a while DH picked it up and I hit the internet to see what to do. I immediately found a local site with a number to call for volunteers who take care of the little guys and called them and left a message. Meanwhile another site said what to do. DH opted to warm up the little guy in his hands while I made some homemade pedialyte and looked for a dropper to rehydrate him. I fed him a few droppers full and he perked up considerably, though he started rooting around DH's hand nibbling him trying to nurse.

I microwaved some small towels and put them in a box and then lined them with a soft kitchen towel and tucked him in. He fell asleep right away.

An hour later we got a call from the place and they took our location, an hour after that we heard back from a volunteer a few miles away where we took the little guy. The volunteer wondered whether we wanted to raise him ourselves, but I'd need to go get one or two others to raise with him so he wouldn't get too tame. At the end, I knew my boss would likely kill me if I brought baby squirrels to the office to feed, so we opted to just leave the little guy with other ones at the care of the volunteer. I hope he makes it, the volunteer coordinator who took him said he looked pretty good. :)
So that was our good deed of the day for yesterday: baby squirrel rescue. Considering how much squirrels love to dig up and kill my potted plants, well... but how could anyone resist such a cute little guy?