Little flying squirrel baby and baby grays

Whoa, my rehab season started with a BANG!  Easter Sunday the first seven arrived, and now I am up to 14 babies, 13 gray squirrels and 1 tiny flying squirrel.

It has been a busy week with lots of new situations, but I have not lost a single baby of the newcomers.  I did, however, lose every single one of the initial neonates, and it turns out they succumbed to Giardia, a highly contagious parasite that responds to only a certain medication which I did not have in my arsenal nor knew that they were dying from this parasite.  Lesson learned, it was an exhausting battle that lasted 10 days. But now I know, and I will never lose another baby to this disease.

One of the babies arrived severely dehydrated, wet, and cold, and it had the dreaded "white eye syndrome" where the cornea of the eye, which is brown in healthy squirrels, has a whitish to bluish sheen.  Usually these babies die shortly upon arrival, but I had just gotten a small incubator from a friend as a surprise gift and decided to take on the battle.  We won, the baby did recover, the eyes actually returned to their usual brown color, and hopefully her vision will not be impaired.  It is too soon to tell, she can see, but I don't know how well just yet.

Here are pictures of the tiny flying squirrel boy.  I posed him on a knitted flying squirrel I designed, and he seemed to like to nuzzle his replacement mom.

Little flyer boy opened his eyes this morning, he is quite a little cutie.  I hope to get him company soon since flyers are highly social.  

Yesterday I had to go "squirrel fishing" here in town when the people could not get a little baby gray out from under their car.  Here is the little stinker, he had been hiding inside a rear tire.  

I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into my world!

Sigi