5 month old grey spending ALL of her out time scavenging for food. Lawd.

[Mayhaps]

Hello all! So, I have a 5 month(ish) old grey squirrel named Luna who is suddenly driving me INSANE when I let her out each day. She is literally spending every single second she is out of her cage looking for food. I mean, LITERALLY. I'm pretty sure I'm giving her enough food every day, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm a tad worried I might overfeed her actually.

**DIET** Luna gets 2 Henry's Healthy Blocks when I wake up and then in the afternoon or early evening she gets her salad. I follow the Henry's Pets food pyramid, so her salad is always a handful-sized mixture of greens (I get her a Spring mix that has a little of every kind of leafy veggie mixed together; romaine, arugula, cabbage, etc.), 2 or 3 broccoli florets, two small amounts of starches - usually 2 or 3 whole sugar snap peas (they're her favorite) along with either a baby carrot, a single smallish whole mushroom, or half of a 3/4 inch thick cucumber slice cut into chunks. Then she gets one or two small pieces of whatever fruit I have for her at the time, but only every other day since I give her a strawberry yogurt treat (for rodents) if she goes back into her cage without giving me any trouble lol. Occasionally I give her a yogurt bite while she is out (like in her picture) but I don't do it all the time so she won't just assume she'll get one every time. In fact, I stopped giving them to her when she is out at all bc of this recent behavior. She never stashes anything at all. She eats every bit of her salad. **DIET**

She didn't start to do this until recently so maybe she is starting to bulk up for winter? She started acting like this in July and I live in Louisiana so I thought maybe that is awfully early to start winter behavior? Is this hoarding/bulking up behavior or is she really not getting enough food every day? I love taking her out but OMG she is driving me crazy. You should see her when I make her stop being naughty. She sits in my palm and I swear, if she was a human, she would have her arms crossed with her bottom lip sticking out when Mommy doesn't let her do whatever she wants.

Any advice or reassurance about this situation? She comes out every day (unless there is a reason such as illness or something) for at least 30 mins to an hour and a half, depending on when my husband comes to bed bc she isn't a fan of him and I figure it's better to let her come out for a short time rather than not at all.

I have some experience with squirrels as I used to be a licensed rehabber in another state. I raised two that were releasable and one that had significant neuro damage from her fall out of the tree. I've never experienced having a normal squirrel that can safely come out and has no medical issues. I haven't released Luna bc she is obviously very imprinted on me and she is entirely unafraid of our cats and our dog so it worries me. She is such an amazing and sweet little personality and I miss our play/snuggle time! She NEVER bites, even when she is making her growly squeaky noises while I pry her off of things or pick her up when she doesn't want to be picked up lol.

OH, not sure if this is significant but she DID wean herself pretty early. She started refusing a bottle at about 12 weeks, which I found odd since she was quite young still, but I know I'm supposed to let her decide when to stop wanting formula so I just went with it and increased the amount of calcium-rich foods I gave her. A couple of weeks ago she got into a drawer and found one of her old nipples and MAN you should have heard the sounds coming out of her when I tried to pry her off of it, so maybe I should start giving her a wee bit of formula again?

Thank you in advance everyone and sorry for rambling. I'm terrible about doing that lol. Figured I'd try to answer any potential questions from the get-go.