Small Squirrel Losing Balance
I hope you will get back to me soon and if you think this should be in the emergency help needed section would you move it there. I may be able to help this squirrel but I am not positive I can.
There is a small squirrel that comes to my deck. I wonder if she is old enough to be weaned. If she is not I wonder where her mother is. She is old enough to eat nut, but there is a time when young squirrels eat solids and are still not weaned. She has taken nuts in the shell from me but I do not remember if I have seen her open them. Young squirrels take nut and hide them before they can open them. She has a problem balancing. At first she would fall over when she scratched herself, I thought this was just because she was young but today she has fallen over when she was eating nuts and a few time fell off a bench she was eating on, I was afraid she might fall off the deck. She fell over once when she turned and she sometimes holds her head on a slant. When she walks you can see that she has a problem with balance. It may not have been her but I may have seen her run fairly fast which might make it hard to catch her, but if she gets much worse I will probably be able to cache her by hand.
I have been bitten hard by a squirrel before and I am not afraid to get biting by her (beside she is a small squirrel) but what I am most worried about is scaring her and losing the chance to help her if she really needs help which I think she probably does. The only thing I can think of that might help is to treat her as if she is not completely weaned and feed her formula. What happens to a squirrel that is old enough to eat solids but not completely weaned if it does not get milk?. Is there anything else this could be. I have once seen an older squirrel that held it head slanted. I thought it was probably caused by a concussion but with this squirrel it has developed over time and at first it did not look serious to me.
I cannot take her to a vet. If I take her to a rehabber she will not come home again and it is possible that she still have a mother that is alive.
I am planning to go shopping today and pick up what I need to make formula.