New Yorkers: Do you want to take in baby squirrels and birds?

About 50 New Yorkers turned out last night to check out whether they really might want to take in orphaned baby squirrels or injured pigeons. If only 10 got their licenses, it could potentially double the number of people New Yorkers can call when they find an injured animal.

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Baby Squirrels Lose Potential Foster Mother, Gain a Sister

Alvin, Baby Ruth, Benji,  Grover

Mickey has been evicted. I could tolerate when the one-time mother squirrel would tussle with these three orphaned babies when they dared to enter her squirrel palace. I thought she’d get used to them. Instead she actually followed one out of the house, went to where the babies were sleeping, picked out the one who had trespassed on her property and started slapping at him with her paws. Luckily, like most squirrels, she is an incompetent and half-hearted fighter.

So, I evicted her. Don’t worry; she still gets to have the house she has come to love so much. But she’s moved to another cage. And she totally knows what’s going on. After the incident of her pushing around the baby squirrel, I took all the babies out of the cage and put them in a carrier. She came out 10 minutes later and searched the area for them.

Meanwhile, the babies got another companion, a female baby squirrel of what seems to be their age. She’s from Stuyvesant Town and was climbing on people’s feet. She’s healthy but too young to be out on her own. She ate and immediately joined the pile of baby squirrels in the basket. She’s a little bit shy, which is understandable, but the group accepts her as one of their own. They invited her to their favorite basket for a nap.

In keeping with my tradition of naming the squirrels after successive U.S. presidents, I looked to the list and found we

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FDNY Saves Three Baby Squirrels

Yesterday Queens fireman Ralph Longo, was putting out a car fire and through all the smoke and fire extinguisher fog, he saw something tiny and gray move . He found four baby squirrels and pulled them out of the wreck.

One of the babies died, but the men at the Ladder 129 washed the three squirrel survivors and put them in a box with papertowels. Longo looked at the list of New York state wildlife rehabbers and called me. Then, after working all day Longo drove into Manhattan and with his girlfriend, dropped them off with me. All in all a nice piece of rescuing by the FDNY. Is there anything these guys don’t do?

Firefighter Longo and his girlfriend feed a rescued squirrel

Two have slight burns. The one boy has it the worst: a burned spot on his tail and singed whiskers. Longo’s girlfriend specializes in the care of human burn victims and mentioned that when they see a person with burnt eyebrows, they assume there’s been smoke inhalation. One of the two sisters has a burnt paw. But, they all seem healthy. They have fur, but they’re eyes are still closed, so I’d guess they’re about four weeks old. They have diarrhea–not unusual after a diet change. I put them in a cat carrier over a heating pad overnight. They were scrambling all around until I put them in this Easter basket-like box. They settled down to snuggle in these Anne Geddes-like pose.

Presumably

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