VERTICAL LIMIT.: July 2009

Last night I was halfway bathing when my mother knocked on the bathroom door.
"Girl, come out and see! [My brother] found two dunno-what, look like mouse or rats or something."
I was like, "Hah?? What what? Wait for me, don't throw away yet - I wanna seee...!"

So out I ran, wrapped up in my towel to see what the commotion was all about. True enough, on our big dustbin lid were two furry little brown creatures, about 4 or 5 inches in length. Here's what happened. My mother had asked my brother to fill up a watering can. He was just about to do so when he discovered that it was FILLED WITH LEAVES. So he began to empty the leaves onto our big dustbin lid, and *plop* the two creatures fell out of it!

At first glance I thought they looked like moles, but it couldn't have been possible at all. Because we don't just find moles where we live. Upon further inspection we thought they could be baby squirrels. Newborn squirrels, in fact - haven't even opened their eyes yet! So we were all "How, how, what do we do??" We lined a shoebox with newspaper and tissue and put them in there. (Of course, we DID NOT use bare hands because you know how some fussy mothers will abandon their young if they have foreign scents.)

There was nothing else we could do. We did try feeding them water but they repeatedly shied away from the straw. We left the box as close as possible to the original position of the watering can, in hope that the mother would come back and see them there. Then I went on Yahoo! Answers to see if people could give suggestions as to what we might be able to do. Most people said that the mother will not come back for them anymore because we disturbed the nest and removed the young. What were supposed to do? We simply couldn't put them back into the watering can??

We wished that we never accidentally disturbed the nest. Little did we realize. . . In actual fact, there were some windows installed there earlier this week. My mother was away - and the windows were left closed all along. This means that the mother squirrel could not return to them in the first place. She might've already given up in the first place. Had my brother not emptied the watering can and discovered them there, they would've starved and died. It was a blessing in disguise that we discovered them there after all.

As I said earlier, we left them outside. And prayed against all odds that the mother WOULD come back and take them away and they'd be gone by the morning. Meanwhile, I asked around to see if anybody would they them as pets, or help us bring them to an animal shelter. The next morning it appeared to us that the mother did not come back. My mother decided to take them to RSPCA. But no one was there. So she decided to try pet shops instead. Pet shop after pet shop. At last she did find one that would take them! We were relieved. She wanted to keep them, actually, and so did I - but they were much too young for people with no squirrel-care experience. And I was very afraid that they would die under our care. >.<

That's pretty much the end of the fascinating experience of finding two baby squirrel in a WATERING CAN. We're dropping by the pet shop next weekend to visit them, though. Here're some photos we managed to take.