A Wee Visitor

Will and Ben were playing outside in the backyard as they took a break from home school lessons today. It wasn't long before Will came rushing inside really upset about something. When he calmed down, he told me he stepped on a baby squirrel. I followed him outside to see what it was he was talking about -- I couldn't figure out how he would've done that. Sure, enough, there in the grass at the base of a tree was a little fuzzy, eyes-still-sealed squirrel. Once we realized he was still breathing, didn't seem to have any broken bones (from our inexperienced investigation), and its mama didn't seem to be anywhere nearby we brought him inside and put him in a box so our dog wouldn't eat it while we researched online. I made some phone calls and learned from a squirrel rescuer that we shouldn't feed it until we try to return it to its mama. On her recommendation, we put the little fuzz ball in a nest of dried grass in a basket that we tied to the tree we found him near. The lady checked with us through out the day to see if the mama had come for him or not. By dusk, the mama squirrel had searched on the tree he wasn't tied to, but she didn't get him, so I took the little one to the lady who would raise him and release him. It was an unplanned, but interesting, lesson for our first day of home school!