Suburban Wildlife

Today was a quiet day...to a point.

I was busy working on freelance, minding my own business. The Dear Husband comes in and says, Kitty brought another present. You need to see this.

I turn off the dvd and wander to the backyard, where Kitty was happily skittering around the patio. I look down and see...a critter. By the way, I'm officially Critter Patrol when it comes to Kitty bringing "gifts" to us. The DH usually doesn't want to go near whatever has been broughted into our territory. So I go and investigate.

I don't know what kind of critter it is.

I then get down on hands and knees to further peer at the critter. It's small, gray, fuzzy, and most importantly...not dead. I pet it. It moves. It's a baby...something. I pick it up. It squirms a little, but isn't repulsed by my handling it. I see that he is remarkably in one piece, except for one tooth mark in his little armpit.

The DH looks at the little guy and guesses rat. I point to his tail, which is distinctly not rat-like. I also point out his little hands. Hmmmm. Raccoon? Uh...

















Look at that cute little fucker. His eyes were still closed tight. While we're examining the little munchkin, Kitty disappears.


We promptly wrap the little guy up in a bandanna and take him to the local vet. They immediately identify him as a squirrel. They also have a deal where they give little boogers like this guy to a local wildlife rehabilitation center so that they stand a chance of surviving. There's some worry about his armpit though, as cat bites are very very bad for squirrels.

They didn't even charge us for dropping off the squirrel. How cool is that?!


On the way home the DH and I discuss where baby squirrels would possibly be stashed away and that we should go looking for them, because we wouldn't want Kitty to get the other ones, right?

We get home, I go straight to the backyard and take a cursory look around the back wilderness area to see if there's any sign of squirrels. None are found, so I go meandering back to the patio.

Where I find another goddam baby squirrel sprawled on the cement, with Kitty happily lurking nearby.

I immediately grab the bandanna and place the second squirrel in it. This time, we pet Kitty and sing his praises. More importantly, we give him food.

















Close-up of Squirrel Baby #2:

















Photo of Proud Hunter:















After securing the second squirrel, we decide to wait awhile to see if Kitty brings any more to us before traipsing back to the vet. So I went back to work with the second baby wrapped up and sleeping next to me in the office. After about 45 minutes I made another patio inspection with no new babies to deal with, so we went back to the vet to drop off the second baby.

All's well that ends well, I guess!


In non-sequitur news:

We're getting our driveway repaved:






































It's been driving me crazy to not be able to get the murdersickle out of the garage. BUT, our driveway is gonna look amazing when it's done. Which will hopefully be by early next week.

Hopehopehope...