Helen has been Released
Helen was released last Tuesday.
A good weather window had presented itself and she was approximately 80+% recovered from a bad left arm injury three weeks prior. The good weather continues, daytime temps are in the 50's and 60's with much sun forecast.
[Helen was released earlier in the season than is ideal because she was self releasing in a neighborhood that is very dangerous for squirrels.]
It was a very stressful day, for her especially, and for me.
Helen has never lived in a cage. The only way that I could be certain to get her to location where her house that I had built for her had been mounted, miles away from people, was to catch her in a Have-a-Heart trap. She was freaked out, bewildered and very scared. I feel absolutely terrible about this, but I was never able to think up a better alternative, all things considered.
I placed about 30 lbs. of nuts on the ground at the base of the tree where her house had been attached 30 ft. above. When I finally opened the trap, she had already spent more than 2 hours cowering there, occasionally chewing briefly at the bars. She stayed inside, did not come darting out as expected.
When she was finally coaxed out, she climbed up and sat on my shoulder for a minute or two, looking dazed as she looked around at a completely unfamiliar environment. She paid no mind to the hundreds of nuts on the ground.
Her fear and instinct of self-preservation overwhelmed her curiosity and she pushed her way under my outermost layer, a fleece pullover. I hoped she just needed to warm up a little and relax and reset. However, she had decided that she wanted no part of this strange new world, one that included traps that had lurked in plain sight for months. If this was freedom, she didn't want it.
My stomach sank as I realized that things were not going at all as planned or hoped. I was stunned and was kicking myself, feeling foolish for all the time that I had invested in her house and its placement. (The latter took five days to complete.)
No matter how carefully you plan, you can't control other people's decisions and reactions.
We napped together in the sun as I tried to think through my options, all of the time hoping that she would poke her head out to look at the world, to give this place a second chance.
Ultimately, I decided that I would need to climb the rope that I had set up in the tree and close up her house, to prevent some other creature from occupying it while I pondered in the coming weeks my next options to obtain freedom for both of us.
When I got up to her house, I carefully took off my fleece where she had hidden away for hours. However, she continued to hide within as I carefully turned it inside out.
I think it was the new perspective, from 30 ft up in the tree that is natural to a squirrel, that began to lift her instinct to hide and open the possibility of curious exploration.
She began to eat oak tree buds, which I had started feeding her in past couple of weeks, moving cautiously about the limbs to find more.
She went into the porches, where I had put some nuts, but did not enter the house.
Soon her normal bedtime began approaching, 4 pm, and she became sleepy. She tried to climb back under my layers, being very much content to go back home with me, but I zipped up the fleece to the top and pulled my collar tight and kept tapping the porch entrance and extending my arm to it as a bridge. (Tapping is the way I have always called attention to new objects or food in her environment.)
Eventually, she went into the main chamber. I heard her shuffle things about for 30 seconds and then everything became quiet. I kept expecting her to come back out.
I began to calmly dismantle my rigging and ready myself for rappel, not saying a word. She did not reappear. I guiltily, sadly wondered if she expected me to be right there next to the house in the morning, as I am when she sleeps in my room.
I buried more than half of the nuts and then hiked out as the sun began to set, not quite sure what to feel.
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Originally Posted by Mel1959
