nrvmeg
09-03-2016, 06:13 PM
This is not a "help needed" post, but I do not see another logical place for it. It's a "this might be useful to someone" post. As a first time squirrel amateur rehabber, I looked for advice here on soft release cages. Many of those posted are the kind that a professional rehabber might invest in, with the double-door entry. My husband built something that is a little different, and it worked really well for us. First, he built a small 3' square by 4' tall cage for the not-ready-for-release stage, and a tunnel that attached this outside cage to a window on our house, for an indoor-outdoor sort of arrangement. Later, my husband built a bigger cage that is 6' tall. Instead of a 2-door arrangement to keep the squirrel from escaping, we used the same tunnel from the window to link the two cages. With a simple metal shim, I could restrict the squirrel to one side of the cage or another so that I could place food in the smaller cage or add branches to the larger cage. Now that we have released our squirrel, Jeffrey, he comes back to the big cage and goes through the tunnel to get the food I am placing there like I did before the release.
Note that the cage is placed next to an old arbor with peeling paint that cannot be reached by the squirrel, and also that the paint on the outside of the cage does not extend to the inside. Anyway, I thought I'd offer this idea as an alternative to a double-door system, especially for people who are not in this for the long run.277543277544277545277546
Note that the cage is placed next to an old arbor with peeling paint that cannot be reached by the squirrel, and also that the paint on the outside of the cage does not extend to the inside. Anyway, I thought I'd offer this idea as an alternative to a double-door system, especially for people who are not in this for the long run.277543277544277545277546