Posted on 10/12/2005 4:38:47 AM PDT by Jet Jaguar
SEATTLE - This is a story about a mother, a baby in dire need and how the two came together.
It didn't matter that they didn't come from the same place, or look at all alike -- they weren't even the same species! But instinct took over when the need was greatest.
Debby Cantlon of Seattle explains: "He doesn't know he's a squirrel; he thinks he's a dog."
She's talking about Finegan, the squirrel. He could be excused for thinking he's a dog, that's how he's being raised.
Rescued at just a few days old, Finegan had fallen from a tree, his mother beside him, dead.
"I didn't think that he was going to make it, he was so dehydrated," says Cantlon.
A friend brought Finegan to Cantlon. She has a knack saving injured birds, squirrels, and raccoons. But Finegan's eyes weren't even open yet -- it was touch and go.
Then Debby's dog Mademoiselle Giselle stepped in.
"Apparently she thought it was a puppy of hers and she was gonna have him, no matter what."
Debby continued to bottle feed the squirrel, but Giselle pulled the extra shifts. Finegan began nursing right alongside the five puppies -- just another littermate burrowing for position.
Now, at six weeks old, while the puppies are still barely walking, Finegan is a rambunctious juvenile. He's strong, can climb just about anything and is into everything.
Finegan was fascinated by KOMO 4 News photographer Randy Carnell and his camera -- he wouldn't stop crawling all over it, nibbling everything, including Randy.
All this is a sign, says Debby, that Finegan is close to being ready to go back into the wild. Once he can crack open and eat nuts and seeds, it will be time.
"My biggest reward is to watch them go free," says Cantlon. "It just makes my heart soar."
But, before then, there will still be a few last bottles and a lot of snuggling with his littermates. While they take a midday nap, Cantlon whispers in the background, "That's what I get out of this. What a gift, what a gift.
Does he bark?
Awwww, Nuts!
Good thing it wasn't a male dog. The squirrel would've gone for his...
Oh, never mind.
I thought this was going to be about Bill Kristol or David Frum.
LOL!
"All this is a sign, says Debby, that Finegan is close to being ready to go back into the wild."
He'll do real well until he decides to play with his dog "cousin" down the street.
squirrel ping.
Awwww, how sweet! Thanks for sharing.
I suppose raising a squirrel to think it's a dog is preferable to raising a boy to think he's a girl.
I'm surprised she doesn't get busted by wildlife control people. A guy who brought a deer back to health was arrested back in 2000 or 2001 for caging a wild animal, or some other stupidity. No good deed goes unpunished.
ping
I know I was threatened with jail and heavy fine for having a orphaned squirrel, luckily, I gave them false name. How ironic that I could get a license on line to blow the squirrel's brains out, but I couldn't keep it till it got big enough to release.
About a million years ago - my fiancee at the time had a "rescue" dog we named "Ugly" (I don't remember how we named it that).
At one point Ugly was in heat and looking for a mate. We thought we had contained her in the house and the yard, but one day when Lynette came home she found Ugly sitting on the front porch.
A few days later we were convinced she was pregnant. The pregnancy proceeded pretty normally, except that the birthing finally became much overdue. We took her to the vet and the vet said she had a "false" pregnancy. You'd never know it by looking at her.
That evening a neighbor's cat across the street gave birth to a litter of about six or seven kittens. A couple days later the mother cat was hit by a car as she ran across the street. She died from her injuries.
The next day the neighbor brought the box of kittens to Lynette and asked her to watch them while she went to work. Sometime that day, Ugly found the box of kittens, took them each to the floor of her favorite closet and began to nurse them. She adopted them as her own pups and her life saving milk surely helped them all adopt her as their mother "cat".
None of our friends that didn't see it would believe us when we told them, and I am sure that remains true today.
It's good thing this squirrel didn't land withing the range of my bitch retriever's tender mercies. BTW, if this woman is interested, I have some fine recipes for squirrel stew.
That was a good ole dog.
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