inside outside squirrels....

[artemisnhounds]

Hi! our adventure began when the neighbors cut down their trees and my kids found a baby squirrel...eyes still closed and body cold.. Since then Jack (who now we know is a girl lol) has grown so much and is now about 4 months old. We simply adore her. We live in a suburban neighborhood and she loves being outside but i dont know if she could completely live on her own. We take her in at night...she has made a nest in the neighbors tree! She comes if shes awake and we call her when shes outside. At night she sleeps in a guinea pig cage and before i go to work i put her outside. The other night she even slept in bed with my daughter. I guess my question is...does anyone have this type of indoor outdoor squirrel? Im not sure what we will do in the winter...
we have grown so attached to her. She even grooms us lol. I have had guinea pigs, rats, and hamsters my whole life...and she is by far the most affectionate rodent we have ever owned!
thoughts?
tara

[corear1014]

Oh my goodness! Your story sounds a lot like mine, except I haven’t put ours (Pip) outside yet. We also found her after neighbors cut trees down and thought she was a he for the longest! LOL! She is the sweetest thing ever. I don’t have an answer to your question, as I am new here myself, but just wanted to say welcome to the board! :Welcome :)

[artemisnhounds]

thanks she really has become a member of our family! i never thought my heart would be stolen away by a squirrel!!http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=846449581498&set=a.678341810818.2138374.40703153&type=1&theater

this is her sleeping stretched out on my lap lol.

[Scooterzmom]

First of all, :Welcome to the board! :wave123

Sounds to me like your little girl has found the best of both worlds. I would give my right arm to have one who does that :) I don't know where you live but maybe there's a way to rig some kind of squirrel door for her when the winter comes... so Jack can come and go at will. You might want to install a nest box, close to the house, so she can have food handy and you can see her around. Lined with Polyfill, a comfy nest box with a good predator guard is often the best of solutions.

I know others have had that situation of an indoor-outdoor squee, I'll let them weigh in on that. They know much more than I do.

P.S. We need pics of this little baby of yours. We're nuts about pics here :D

[artemisnhounds]

oops ow well cant get the picture up!

[Scooterzmom]

oops ow well cant get the picture up!

Oh true, don't have the permission yet... you can email it to me, I'll post it for you. Click on my name you'll see my email addy :)

[corear1014]

I feel the same way artemisnhounds. I keep telling my friends that I'm in love with a squirrel. She has us all wrapped around her tiny paws. She too is around 4 months old. My oldest son was reading your post with me and he said... I wonder if this lady lives in our neighborhood! LOL!

[artemisnhounds]

it wont let me click on your name yet either lol, do i have to maybe be a member for some time? We also have a cat, and there are tons of cats in the neighborhood, but Jack seems to be thankfully wary of them and has proven she can outrun them. She HATES being in the front yard and has a well deserved fear of lawn mowers and anything loud. She LOVES my daughters room because she always seems to find some sort of chocolate hiding in there and then we need to pry it away from her as she growls at us lol. Her favorite place is the top of our heads. mjs

[artemisnhounds]

we live in pa in lower bucks!

[Nancy in New York]

we live in pa in lower bucks!

Do you mean Bucks County?
You can email me your pictures and I will post.
***

[corear1014]

South Carolina here...

Here is a picture of Pip eating her lunch today.

[artemisnhounds]

yes lower bucks is just what we refer to it as because its in the lower part...about 30 min from philly and 30 min from new hope :o)

[artemisnhounds]

Pip is so cute!!! Jack doesnt seem to be eating her rodent block anymore....she seems to enjoy the maple seeds from the trees out back, strawberries from my garden, snap peas but not the casing just the inside, and cat food when she can get to the cats bowl lol. I just wish shed finish what she starts she left me with a bunch of half eaten strawberries dangling off my plants! I tried to give her a raspberry from my bush and she took one bite and threw it at me...guess that settles that lol. Although she always seems to be more interested in what im trying to eat and tried to wrestle an ice pop from my hand the other day. and ive caught her eating an occasional mouth full of dirt.

She also does this weird thing where she uses her teeth to scrape along my hands. It only hurts when she gets inbetween my fingers in the webbing lol. She seems to do this a lot when my hands may be dirty.

[Nancy in New York]

yes lower bucks is just what we refer to it as because its in the lower part...about 30 min from philly and 30 min from new hope :o)

Our member keetz1205 lives in Bucks County.....She's a fantastic girl.:) She is going to take a members little squirrels this weekend and release them for her. She's such a blessing.:grouphug

[corear1014]

Thank you!:)

That's funny! Pip does it with my hands too, it never hurts, but I say she must be grooming me.

Sounds like Jack has a good variety of foods :). Finally got Pip eating the correct things, thanks to this board..

You came to the right place for loads of information. They've helped me out a lot!

Welcome again!

[Nancy in New York]

Jack...:Love_Icon :Love_Icon

http://i673.photobucket.com/albums/vv95/nancym518/TSB%20photos/GetAttachment-2.jpg

http://i673.photobucket.com/albums/vv95/nancym518/TSB%20photos/meandjacktree1.jpg

http://i673.photobucket.com/albums/vv95/nancym518/TSB%20photos/jackinstrawberrie1.jpg

[artemisnhounds]

yes she definitely gets a lot of different things...including the junk food. Spoiled spoiled...speaking of spoiled shes now manipulated her way into my other daughters bed and is sound asleep! I think she thinks shes more of a cat then a squirrel.

Nancy thanks for posting our pics! When Jack was little i always had intentions of releasing her...but she is so much a part of our family now! I figured hey if you love something you let it go...if it comes back it "shes" yours to love forever.

[corear1014]

Absolutely Adorable! :Love_Icon :)

[Nancy in New York]

Jack is adorable. Will she go to other neighbors? Gee, it really is risky releasing a squirrel in a neighborhood that is so used to people.
I just hope that she doesn't decide to jump onto any children, UGH, that could be very dangerous for her well being.
She is cute. Just don't know if this is the right approach to her release.:thinking

[artemisnhounds]

shes afraid of the neighbors kids...she will really only to go me, my husband, and my kids. If we have friends around she will go to them but seems to stay away from people when we arent around.

I do worry a lot about that. I had debated back and forth about releasing her in the woods, but i dont know if shed make it. Now im considering building her a large enclosure.

[Nancy in New York]

shes afraid of the neighbors kids...she will really only to go me, my husband, and my kids. If we have friends around she will go to them but seems to stay away from people when we arent around.

I do worry a lot about that. I had debated back and forth about releasing her in the woods, but i dont know if shed make it. Now im considering building her a large enclosure.

I have a horror story that I will make really brief. I used to release here. I had a squirrel that I needed to overwinter. One glorious January day, I decided that he should go outside with hubby. He would not leave my husband alone, he would be on him 24/7. I NEVER thought he would take off, ever. Well he did right to the backyard and through the fence. We looked all over for him. The next day he came home. Phew.....
Three months later, we get an email from a guy that hubby worked with along with a film clip....Squirrels gone wild in __________, the name of my town.
Turns out that our squirrel had gotten scared, a couple of doors down from my house, and ran up on a neighbor. The neighbor tried to get inside and the squirrel was right on his shoulder. He was trying to get his have a heart trap from inside as he said this squirrel was acting awfully friendly and not leaving when he tried to shoo him away. Bob, my squirrel got scared, I imagine and ran up this guy, scratching him, he NEVER bit. Well, our neighbor went to the hospital, had to get rabie shots, I kid you not....and the local news came to interview him. We had never seen it on the news....nothing. But we knew it was our squirrel, because what other squirrel would have jumped up on this guy who lived two doors down from us....Oh and the real kicker too, is that he worked with my husband, at the same company....:rotfl
Now if we had known about this when it happened, we would have just told them that he does not have rabies, since he was never outside....but they would be required to test him anyway....which means cutting off his head and testing the brain. OMG OMG OMG OMG Because I know if we knew he ran up our neighbor we WOULD have acknowledged that it most likely was our squirrel, I know we would have....and we would have signed his death certificate....:shakehead
Just be very careful that if your neighbors know that you have a squirrel, and he does something like Bob did, you will be the first people they look at....UGH!

[Jackie in Tampa]

:Welcome :wave123

[artemisnhounds]

ugg nancy thats my fears. Our neighbors directly around us know about jack, but still it makes me anxious. Sometimes its hard to know what to do. I was thinking of making a large enclosure with pvc piping and screen.

[P3pp3r]

Sounds like a dream situation! How did you start the process of putting her outdoors and knowing she would come when she is called?

[artemisnhounds]

She started off just going outside with us and wed put her in the tree in our backyard...she didnt like it at first and would run back to us. This took a few weeks of bringing her outside to be comfortable with it. We would stay in yard with her and call her and she would come down from the branch. It was kind of just luck i guess. Shes such a sweet girl. I like to think she enjoys our company as much as we enjoy hers.