I’m nuts about my squirrel!
Livi Boulting, 27, from Devon, has a furry little friend…
Eating my breakfast in the kitchen, I noticed our family cat, Baby, was running frantically around the garden. She’s probably just chasing a bird, I thought to myself.
Only on a closer inspection, I noticed that it was actually a tiny squirrel chasing her!
Stepping out into the garden, the little squirrel stopped dead in its tracks.
Walking closer towards it, I realised it was a baby – probably only a few weeks old!
There was no sign of any parent squirrel, so not too sure what to do, I grabbed a towel from inside.
Placing it on the grass, the squirrel quickly made himself at home.
Stretching out onto his tummy, he kicked out his legs at the back like a little frog.
I’d never been that close to a squirrel before, so I have to admit, I was a little nervous.
After all, I didn’t know if it was carrying anything or if it was vicious.
He had just been giving Baby a run for her money! But he was so cute, it was hard not to smile.
Slowly stepping back from the towel,
I thought I’d leave the squirrel to it.
‘I’m sure your parents will come and pick you up soon,’ I smiled.
Only before I knew it, the baby squirrel was off the towel and running towards me.
I didn’t have any time to react.
Jumping into my dressing gown, it nestled into the crook of my arm.
Startled, I kind of just stood there whilst the little fella fell blissfully asleep.
‘Umm, guys,’ I called out to my family. ‘Can you come here!’
Swiftly, my mum, Catharine, 54, dad, Andy, 52, and sister, Honey, 14, had rushed out into the garden to see what was happening. ‘What’s going on?’
Dad asked.
Turning to face them, I nodded down to my elbow.
‘Well, he’s clearly a boy,’ Mum laughed, pointing out the obvious.
‘He’s so cute!’ Honey exclaimed, desperately wanting to stroke him.
I have to admit, with him fast asleep in my dressing gown, he was pretty adorable.
‘We’ll call him Harold,’ I smiled down at him.
We all spent the rest of the day wondering what we were going to do with him. After all, we knew it wasn’t normal to make friends with squirrels. Only, he kept wandering off to the same spot in the woodland behind our house, so one time we followed him. Sadly, we found a dead adult squirrel squirrel, so we figured Harold must be an orphan.
‘We can’t keep him as a pet,’ Mum admitted. ‘Let me have a look online.’ Researching what we should do, we discovered that if we took Harold to the vets, he would most likely be put down as grey squirrels are not endangered and therefore not protected.
‘No! That can’t happen,’ I said. ‘We’ll encourage him back in the wild.’
Harold was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, but he had a full coat of fur, so we established he must have been about 10 weeks old.
Not sure whether he was old enough to find food for himself, we prepared him some snacks of avocado, nuts and dandelions for him.
We played with him for the rest of the day, but when night fell, we all encouraged him to stay outside.
He was a wild animal and he had to fend for himself.
‘Night Harold,’ we all smiled as we headed off to bed.
We knew it was the best thing for him and we assumed that we probably wouldn’t see him after that.
However, the following morning, when I came downstairs, there was Harold, tapping away at the patio doors with his claws.
‘Look who’s back,’ I laughed as the rest of the gang walked downstairs to start their day.
‘Guess he likes us,’ Mum smiled.
Once again, we spent the day in the garden playing with him and rubbing behind his ears.
Now, he comes to say hello most days.
We don’t let him sleep in the house, but he’s a regular garden guest.
He’s great company and he still loves resting on me.
I guess you could say he’s a friend rather than a pet.
We don’t know how long he’ll stick around for, but I’m nuts for Harold!
When we followed him, we realised he was an orphan