One sunny day in mid-September, Lisa spied a tiny squirrel in our front yard and when Christos went down to investigate it was clear the little squirrel was far too young and small to be one his own and was desperate for aid as it tried to hide itself in Christos' jeans! We soon discovered that another juvenile squirrel was nearby as another couple had found a similar beast. A tragedy must have befallen their squirrel family rendering them orphans.
So we took the two desperate animals upstairs to the third floor deck and built them a home of a cardboard box (initially with a heating pad which was later removed) with issues of the London Review of Books (no low brow squirrels for us) as the floor. Food and water were regularly provided and it seems grapes and corn were the favourites. For four weeks the "guys" as we called them got bigger and stronger although it was soon clear that "Noir" (the black one) was dominant to "the Gris" (the grey one).
They cuddled together at night for warmth, groomed each other
and scampered about the deck as they got stronger, often playing some sort of wrestling game with each other it seemed.
When we returned from a brief visit to Victoria, Noir had advanced to the point where he could climb out from the deck and was starting to explore.
After 27 days it all came to an end.
The good news is that Noir is big enough to be on his own and has apparently moved out and made a new nest nearby for himself (we suspect under the neighbour's roof).
The bad news is that Gris passed away on day 27.
Around noon, Gris managed to get up to the deck railing for the first time (following Noir) but unfortunately he fell into the neighbour's second floor deck and ultimately down into her backyard.
He survived all that and was soon our front of our house scampering desperately around .... Christos tried to catch him in a box but he was too fast and clearly having none of it.
Eventually he scurried away into one of the other neighbours' backyards and we went off to shop for dinner, hoping to catch him later when he was tired out. We returned in the afternoon and Christos went searching for him but at 5pm he discovered his tiny body at the base of the tree in our neighbour's backyard; Gris had made it all the way to the neighbour's backyard but could not get to our deck from the tree and we suspect he just ran out of steam eventually or fell and could not get up after one too many tries.
While it was quite sad and tears have been shed for the tiny little bugger, we both revel in the fact that Gris got 27 days he would never have had (with mate cuddles, corn, grapes and sun on the body) and that Noir seems to have made it (he has already been back once on the deck for corn and climbs like a squirrel twice his size!), at least for the first lap of life in this cruel world.
Goodbye Gris and Good Luck Noir!!!!
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