Originally Posted by
olorin19
Same squirrel, different front paw -
About ten days ago, I noticed that Iggy was moving around while holding his left front paw off the ground. I kept an eye on him for a couple days (he comes by many times daily) and eventually decided he needed help.
I got him inside to check him out, and he had an injury on the equivalent of the ring finger where the claw looked partly detached. I got him into the release cage then onto clavamox.
What seems to have happened over the past six days is that the claw (or at least most of it) has come off entirely. The past few days, it looked like the claw was barely attached. This morning, the dangling claw is gone. While he is in the cage so that I m not able to handle him for a good look, there is a small black area at the end of the pink finger. My guess is that a new claw has been growing underneath, and the old one fell off when there was enough of the new claw there to protect the finger.
I was somewhat wondering if I would need to intervene to remove the dangling claw, but mostly figured this would take care of itself.
To me, this is basically the same as losing a fingernail or toenail. When I was a kid, I got hit in the skate by a puck while playing hockey, pretty much right on my big toenail. Over a week or so, I grew a new toenail underneath, with the old toenail gradually detaching. By the time it came off, I had a new but smaller toenail ready underneath, which continued to grow to normal size. My toenail looked a real black mess as this was happening, but it all worked out fine without me needing to do anything in particular.