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Even if my father and mother abandon me, the LORD will hold me close.
PSALM 27:10
Nothing brings more satisfaction than seeing a baby enjoy its milk, whether from its mother or from a bottle. Babies and milk go together. Mother’s milk, delivered straight from the mom, is best whatever the species, of course. But in a hungry moment, other delivery methods for the milky nourishment sometimes must do. Once orphan animals are desperately hungry, they soon accustom themselves to being fed from syringes, eye droppers, bottles, or whatever else is handy to help get milk down their tiny throats and into their empty little bellies. I wasn’t sure, however, that such would be the case with Spark.
My best guess is that this unbelievably tiny neonate red squirrel was orphaned so early in life that he barely had time to learn how to drink from his mother. I don’t believe he had enjoyed very many meals before he got separated from her. He just didn’t seem to have a clue about how to go about the business of eating.
“Neonates” are wild babies of any sort that are too young to have any fur or feathers, the true newborns that haven’t had much time to grow yet. They look indescribably weird to me, like a blob of pink Play-Doh that is almost—but not quite—shaped into some unidentifiable animal, with dark splotches added where eyes and ears should be.
Even rehabbers need time and experience to be able to identify neonates at first glance, because these tiny ones bear no resemblance whatsoever to the animals they will become. And when they enter rehab, their pink skin, for which they’re often called “pinkies,” is usually all wrinkled from dehydration, and possibly dirty or damaged to boot. Spark was certainly all of that. My first impression wasn’t, Oh, how cute! My first impression was more like, Oh, how ghastly! Whatever that thing is, it isn’t going to live long…
Spark at intake
Pinkies have that effect on you. You’re momentarily horrified to see something like that out in the light of day (where it should never be seen anyway). Those kinds of sad and weird-looking little creatures belong safely tucked away in a warm, dark, quiet nest wherever Mom has hidden them. And that’s where they need to stay—at least until they look presentable enough to meet the world.
Yet there Spark was, in all his wrinkly pinkiness. His rescuers had looked down and spotted him scrabbling around on the hard pavement of a store parking lot under the blazing summer sun. No trees were nearby for him to have fallen out of; there was not so much as a bush or a patch of grass. It was hot, black pavement only, with that tiny Spark of life in the middle of it. He was a hard-luck case if I had ever seen one.
Miniscule but Mighty
The only way tiny Spark’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day could have been more disastrous were if a car had run over him. My best guess at his backstory (rehabbers do a lot of guesswork because the animals can’t tell us what troubles them) was that he dropped out of the undercarriage of a car or truck someone had driven to the store. Red squirrels are notorious for wreaking havoc in, on, around, and under people’s vehicles, as you may already know if you live where they live. It would not surprise me if Spark’s mother had built her nest and delivered her babies in the undercarriage of a car. A little nest-shaking over a bump in the pavement was probably all it took to jar Spark out of his happy home so that he was left behind when the car drove away.
Like me, Spark’s rescuers had been a little horrified at his pinkie appearance. Still, they took him home and tried to give him a few drops of cow’s milk on a Q-tip. He wasn’t having it! He didn’t know what to do, and they didn’t know how to help him. That turned out to be a good thing since cow’s milk is such a bad thing for wild babies. Yet these finders were simply being compassionate and trying to keep whatever “it” was alive while they called around to find a wildlife rehabilitator. They brought him in the instant they found someone more experienced who could take him. That kind of rescuer gives orphan animals the best chance of survival!
When these people handed Spark over to me, however, I really did think, That thing isn’t long for this world! Those are not the words I said to his rescuers, of course. I’ve seen from experience that God has put an unbelievably strong spark of life in all His creatures, so I figured wherever there’s a spark of life, there’s hope.
“We’ll do the best we can,” I told his finders. “Let’s start right now.”
They watched with interest as I weighed and examined the less than half an ounce of Spark there was. So very tiny! Figuring that most critters’ stomach capacity is about 5 percent of their body weight, I knew that meant Spark could only take in maybe half a milliliter (or cc) of fluid at a time. I had an electrolyte mix warmed and ready so I could start rehydrating him as soon as he arrived. He wouldn’t nurse from a tiny nipple; he didn’t seem to know how. But when I started dribbling the mix a few drops at a time into his mouth from an oral syringe, wonder of wonders he swallowed and swallowed again. We were all smitten at how mightily determined he was despite his miniscule size.
From that moment on, for all his clumsy efforts at feeding, Spark made it clear that he was one spark of life that was not going to be put out easily—not if he could help it. He swallowed all the rehydrating fluid I offered, every time I offered it. When he seemed recovered from his dehydration and from any cow’s milk that had gotten inside, I gradually switched him over to specialized squirrel formula. With that, he really went to town!
He even learned to love what are called Miracle Nipples, specially made for squirrelly types. He soon learned how to get the most out of them the fastest. He ate like such a horse at every meal that I had to rein him in a little so he wouldn’t aspirate formula into his lungs and get sick. Every time I fed him, he would do a little happy dance with his back legs that was ridiculously cute.1 It was wonderful to see him disappoint my initial expectations that whatever “it” was wouldn’t live long, and to see him show such enthusiasm for life and food.
Feeding Frenzies
Spark was enthusiastic practically to the point of having a feeding frenzy at every meal, which was okay by me. If only there had not been so many of those meals to deal with. You can put baby birds and raccoons and rabbits to bed for the night after a final late feeding, but not baby squirrels or opossums. Oh no! Their pinkie forms have to be fed around the clock, which is why rehabbers start looking so haggard as spring baby season gets into full swing.
In the middle of the night, every night, I would stumble bleary-eyed out of my warm bed at the sound of my phone alarm and head downstairs to my bathroom to roust Spark out of his warm bed for a meal. (There was no point in keeping him out in the wildlife shed at that stage. He didn’t stir out of his nest in a little cage near the bathroom sink, and I didn’t want to trek outside in the dark to feed him. Getting up at night was rough enough.) I’d warm up the squirrel formula in hot water and throw another SnuggleSafe heat button in the microwave. (Those are the most indispensable baby animal warmers ever!) Then I’d open the bathroom door, reach inside the cage, and pick up that tiny, hot little spark of life. He’d squirm and squeak a little, and then go to town on his meal. Afterward, I’d clean his face and “restroom” him at the other end.
It took me a little time to figure out the wee hours feeding routine, but I soon got it down to a speedy ten minutes, after which I could crawl back into bed, only to repeat the process at first light. I could sleep peacefully till then, knowing Spark wasn’t suffering any hunger pangs. And at least I had company while I was awake. Our dog Fritz has loved babies, both human and animal, ever since we got him, and he has never harmed a living thing. He would sit at my feet for every feeding (day or night) and wait his turn to be allowed to sniff Spark (held safely in my hand) for a second to make sure the baby was okay before I returned it to the nest. Fritz frequently slept by the cage during the day as well, a self-appointed babysitter. (The door was closed by night when I was asleep, of course. Our sleek cat, Satin, was animal baby crazy in a different way than Fritz.)
Prizewinning Feeding Fanatics
As I mentioned earlier, it usually takes a little while for wild animal orphans like Spark to figure out how to feed from a source other than Mom, but most of them quickly get to the point where they are quite enthusiastic at feeding time, if fairly quiet about it. Bunnies and squirrels like Spark are nearly silent, albeit grateful at the moment of milk delivery. Little opossums make only a gentle sneezing sound when hungry, which is a funny and appealing characteristic.
The prizewinning noisemakers of nature at feeding time are baby raccoons. I can’t even describe how loudly they can turn up the volume when they realize feeding time is upon them. They give a whole new meaning to the term feeding frenzy. That’s part of the reason behind their unchallenged reputation as the hardest critters to raise rehab style. At feeding time, grabbing the first raccoon kit out of four or five absolutely guarantees that the rest of them will screeeech at the top of their lungs in protest. They all want to eat first. It’s the nearest sound to a noise that can drive you insane with only a few minutes of exposure I have ever heard.
I’m glad squirrels like Spark are so much easier to deal with. Feedings with them—even a whole nest full at a time—are almost a soothing experience by comparison, perhaps with the exception of the feeding that gets you out of bed in the middle of the night. But like human babies, eventually they grow up, and it happens faster than you think. It sure happened that way with Spark…
1To watch the “Spark doing the Happy Dance at feeding time” video, visit my website at www.trishann.com and click on the “Raccoon Gangs Book” tab at the top. Scroll down to the “Videos from the book” section, where you’ll find a dozen videos listed under the drop-down arrow. Spark’s happy dance is among them.