Ok... so this is how it all happened! The other afternoon, I was putting Baylee's shoes on her to go to Target for some things that I needed and Bryan was waiting for us outside talking on his cell phone. All of the sudden I heard a horrible yelp from a dog and I just knew that someone's animal was either in a fight with another something or had been hit by a car. Baylee and I both ran to the front door and to our amazement we saw something so strange... Bryan was standing in the neighbor's yard across the street and some other neighbors, who were walking their dog were standing across from them holding their dog up in the air, as the other neighbor's cat, who lives in the yard Bryan is standing in is leaping through the air trying to attack the hind area of the dog. It was crazy! Finally the people with the dog moved on and I hear Bryan explaining to them that this wasn't his house or cat, and he was sorry. I think they were kind of in shock but were fine and the dog, while scared was ok. I opened the door and said, "what is going on?" and he told me that he was trying to guard a baby squirrel that had fallen out of the nest that our pal, Rufus the cat, had taken from our yard over to his and Bryan didn't want him to hurt it. So, I then asked, "what are you going to do with a baby squirrel?" and he said... I don't know Christie, if I knew I wouldn't be standing here looking like an idiot, just get me something to put it in .
So Baylee and I went and got a sand bucket and tossed it across the street to him, he then put it over the squirrel and went and got the neighbor's hose to keep the cat at arms length and away from him. I could just imagine the cat attacking Bryan and Bryan doing something to the cat to protect himself and then having to explain this to the neighbor across the street that wasn't home during this chaos! Finally after turning on the hose, the cat sauntered across to the other side of the yard and Bryan was able to put the baby squirrel in the bucket and bring it over to us. I must say... I don't like squirrels but this baby was a cute one. It hadn't even opened its eyes yet and didn't seem to have any scratches or marks on it, just breathing heavily liked it was scared to death. So then I thought.. well, we could call the emergency vet center and find out what to do with it, which I did and they referred me to the SC Wildlife center. The Wildlife center apparently deals with squirrels all the time and after a long wait and 5 teleprompts later I finally figured out with the 3 steps they gave me what to do. Step 1: Try and reunite the squirrel with the mother... ok, well that's impossible, we have so many where would we start, besides how insane is that? Step 2: Try and place the squirrel back in nest... ok, it was 10 to 25 ft up and I really see me climbing a tree, so No! Step 3: if the baby was handled by a cat in any way please bring to our center immediately the mother will not reunite with it. Ahhhh I can handle that, until they tell me it is across town and completly in the opposite direction we live. So I bet you can guess what we did..... Yes, we took the baby squirrel into the wildlife center and ya ya ya ya $35 donation later, the squirrel was saved. Bryan could've killed me, he was going to opt for the t-shirt for $15 but I insisted on the $35, they didn't have any funding from any gov. agency and basically worked off donations and that was the cost to rehab a baby squirrel! Baylee thought the whole thing was amazing and was convinced that the squirrel had a tummy ache and needed some of her miralax and maybe a shot from the doctor. In the end, we did a good thing I guess, although... Rufus the cat is not happy with us right now, but he'll get over it!
