Little Rock Squirrel, Questions 😊

[Alba]

Hi! I am in the SW, and a family member brought me this little male squirrel. I have been calling him Nubbin. He was found on a super hot day crossing the street in an urban neighborhood. The area is treeless, with any significant foliage in sight and is mostly rocky desert landscape with the exception of nearby houses.

I believe he is a rock squirrel, most common in this area. The problem with that is I can find little or no information about young rock squirrels. I know different species develop at different rates, cuz I can't find anything to tell me at what age he probably is.

He is fully furred, eyes wide open, with lower front incisors. His ears are still neatly tucked against his head. He gets about with ease, and potties on his own with no difficulty.

When the girls who found him had him, (for almost 24 hours) they gave him a couple of drops of water, left him in a shoebox with an energy bar and some blueberries. He scarfed the blueberries.

Our local wildlife rehab was closed at the time they gave Nubbin to me. They only open a couple of days a week. So I rehydrated him, and tried to start him on the temporary formula. He just wouldn't have anything to do with it, so I mashed up a couple of fresh blueberries
In the formula and then strained them out. He gobbles it down now. I've been working on diluting the blueberry flavor each feeding as much as he will tolerate until I can have just straight formula.

I have a safe little cage I keep him in, with layers of fuzzy material, a few pine cones, and some sticks. I have a couple of socks stuffed with rice that I can warm up and took under when I go to put him inside. But he loathes being anywhere but in my hand. He's comfortable enough in his cage, and when I insist he will crawl in and snuggle with the rice sock and bury himself, sleeping nicely. But given the option he wants to be in my hand curled up. He clicks his teeth when he's going to sleep, particularly after he's eaten. I've read that that can be an aggressive or angry sound, but he seems to do it either as a self soothing behavior or something like that. But I definitely could be wrong.

Overall he seems well-adjusted and happy. After he's eaten he likes to trundle about on the bed between my husband and I and explore. Eventually coming to one of us and crawling in to one of our hands to curl up and sleep.

He is a sweet little thing :-)

I'm interested in raising him myself and releasing him, but I've read that that isn't a good idea if I only have one squirrel, but he needs to be raised with other baby squirrels to learn how to socialize properly. I have hand raised hundreds of bottle-fed kittens and sometimes I they have difficulty getting along with other cats when introduced, but usually that seems to be a personality thing rather than how they are raised. With the cats it seems to be instinctual to be standoffish and self-protective until they are ready to make friends.

I would be super interested in hearing any thoughts or opinions. 😊

[Mel1959]

I’m not familiar with rock squirrels but he looks young. If you are going to keep him till release you might want to order some Fox Valley 20/50 formula. It’s more nutritionally complete for his growth than the temporary formula. Many of us have raised a single squirrel and Successfully reintroduced them to the wild. From what I read rock squirrels live in colonies which might impact his release if he needs to be released with other rock squirrels. I just don’t know. Flying squirrels live in colonies and can’t be released by themselves...it’s a death sentence.

His diet seems to consist of lots of items found in trees and not a lot of vegetation. Maybe others that are familiar with this species will offer opinions about food sources. I did notice that they eat insects and other protein sources, similar to flyers. This would mean you could offer meal worms, wax worms or super worms when he gets older.

Thank you for rescuing him...he’s very cute!