Is this injury serious enough to warrant treatment?

[Fraxinus]

Our hand-reared, now wild baby (Peapod) showed up with an injury at the base of her tail a few days ago. It doesn't look deep, but like it did break the skin. She is friendly so we could capture her if needed. While taking the photos of her tail, I also noticed her front right paw appeared to be injured as well.

I'm wondering (from you folks with many more squirrel-hours than I) if this is a wound you would attempt to treat?




Thank you all!

[CritterMom]

Oh, that looks pretty clean.

If you can put some diluted betadyne in a little sprayer you could spritz the area to clean it and kill off any bacteria etc., but it actually looks like it is starting to heal already!

[Fraxinus]

Thanks for the response! Yesterday morning, I noticed that tuft of fur was now gone, with a more open wound -- maybe the fur tuft was just hanging on over the wound? Either that or it was further injured.

Today she didn't show up until the afternoon and she was pretty wary of things going on in the distance and only came down for treats a couple of times (never alarm calling, just staring off in the distance). I was able to mist the wound with some 5% betadine this afternoon when she finally made an appearance. I only got about 3 little squirts at it, and the wind intercepted some, so I'm going to try to get better coverage tomorrow.

[TubeDriver]

That is fairly deep with but none of the major signs of infection (swelling, redness, puss/abscess). If this was my release, I would continue to watch carefully and support here with treats/freshwater etc. If you see signs of infection, you always have the option of bringing her back in. Hopefully, in a few days you will see some harder scabbing forming and she will heal on her own. It may take about 2 weeks before you see significant improvement.

[Fraxinus]

An update for anyone looking for anecdotes on the outcomes of similar wounds -- it seems to be healing fine, and fur around the formerly open part of the wound is growing back. The pictures below are from today (11/27/24).

She has still been causing mischief and chewed through some [more] wires in my husband's truck -- through the Honda anti-rodent tape that he applied while fixing the wires she chewed through previously .




Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

[supersquirrelgirl]

As a side note, 5% betadine straight is too strong to spray directly. As Crittermom indicated above, use diluted betadine.....for 5%, I would dilute 2 or 3 equal parts warm water to 1 part betadine to bring strength to 1-2%. (Some folks say dilute it more.)

Injury to right paw good ??

[CritterMom]

She looks great - it is healing well. Did you know that a LOT of auto manufacturers made the insulation around the wiring in their cars from SOY? Yes, they made the insulation out of FOOD.