Baby Squirrels at WildCare
WildCare currently has 69 orphaned baby squirrels in care. That number is up from 55 babies in care last week. They just keep coming in!
Each of these babies needs very specialized care.
In the videos on this page you’ll meet a very special little patient who fell from her nest in a tall palm tree during a wind storm in July. She must have landed hard and been alone on the ground for a while, as she arrived at WildCare with lots of bruising, severe dehydration and a broken front leg.
In the video above, taken a day after intake, you can see WildCare Medical Staff finishing up a made-to-measure splint for the tiny squirrel. What is the splint made of? A paperclip (of course!), padded with bandage material and held on with tape.
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While she was a baby with her eyes still closed, this young squirrel needed to be fed formula every four hours throughout the day and night.
As she got older, we introduced her to the foods she’ll eat as an adult squirrel (seeds, nuts, fruit, acorns) and, as she began eating more solid foods, we reduced the number of formula feeds.
The video above was taken on August 8, 2019, almost a month after this baby squirrel’s admission to the Wildlife Hospital.
As you can see in the video, her arm has healed and her appetite is great! The right paw, the one that was broken, doesn’t cling to the slippery surface of the syringe and nipple very well, but she has no problem using it for climbing, jumping and wrestling with her siblings!
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In the video above, you can see our young squirrel and her two foster siblings. All of these young squirrels arrived at WildCare with significant injuries, but all three have made a wonderful recovery!
The young squirrels are mostly eating solid foods at this age, and they are only receiving two feeds of formula per day.
They’re much too rambunctious to lift out of the cage for feeding, but they still very much want the warm and creamy formula!
This video shows the dexterity needed by Squirrel Foster Care Team volunteers… one can’t depress the plunger on the syringe too fast or the squirrels will get too much liquid in their mouths, and they can choke. Modulating three syringes for three hungry baby squirrels takes some practice, but by now our Squirrel Team is full of experts!
This method works for a couple of days, but these squirrels were moved to a large outdoor enclosure soon after this video was taken, where they self-weaned and are quickly building the muscles and skills they’ll need as adult, wild squirrels. They will be released back to the wild very soon.
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