Agnes

The Story of Agnes
A Hurricane Sidebar

My boyfriend thinks I am nuts (no squirrel pun intended) and I am sure about fifty percent of the folks who read this story will agree. But these things just seem to keep happening to me. So I think it is just my fate to participate in the rescue of small hurt, sick or abandoned baby animals.

The whole thing began when I was walking down a city street late at night and stepped on a baby squirrel and she screamed. The fact that I actually stepped on her is a big reason why I think it was my fate to intervene. Who else do you know who has ever uttered those words….."I stepped on a squirrel last night in the dark"? No one. People don't just go around the city stepping on squirrels. Before this I don't think I have ever even seen a baby squirrel. It's like baby pigeons, they just seem to appear one day fully formed.

So I think I was meant to help save this little life. Maybe she will do something great someday. Maybe she will influence history (I am obviously making things up here to rationalize my choices), most likely she will not. She will probably just end up nesting in someone's attic and causing all sorts of trouble…..but I digress. All that I know is that after stepping on her and seeing her lying there bleeding, her eyes not even open, I couldn't just leave her to be a dog treat for the next pit bull that came along. Somehow, no matter how much trouble it caused, I had to pick her up and try to help her (side note: 12 years of Catholic school guilt training probably played in heavily here).

So against the backdrop of my more practical side screaming "you have a job tomorrow!!", I picked her up and took her home. I have no idea how to feed or take care of a baby squirrel. The one thing I do know about rescuing baby animals and birds is that the first thing that you do is get them warm. So I took out my heating pad, rolled it up (you shouldn't lay them on it for fear of it being too hot and overheating the animal) and made a nest out of t-shirts next to the pad so the baby could curl up to it or back away to get the proper amount of heat she needed. She was bleeding very, very badly from the nose and I didn't think she would live the night. I didn't have anything to feed her so that would have to wait until morning. And besides, because of the bleeding, I thought it was probably better to wait a little before I tried to get food down her throat.

Since it was only 2 days after the hurricane and the first time that I was able to access my email or blog, I had a lot to do. I also had to prepare for my job the next day. I think that in the end I only got a total of about 3 hours sleep that night. And until early the next morning, I still didn't know what I was going to do with a 4 week old squirrel that needed to be kept warm and fed every 3-4 hours while I did my job (at a major corporation in mid-town Manhattan, btw). I decided somewhere around dawn that I was just going to take her with me and hide her under someone's desk.

I tried to look on the internet to see what and how much to feed her. The instructions were long and complicated and required me weighing her (at that moment I regretted not having that postal scale that I had considered buying) and with everything else I had to do I just didn't have time to read everything through. The one thing that I did glean is that I could feed her puppy milk. Since I didn't have a lactating bitch (I think that this is the first time in my life I have ever used this word correctly) anywhere near, I had to get to a pet store. So this added one more thing to my "to do" list in the morning before my job.

Luckily, I had a bit of flexibility about when I arrived for the job so I called the client in the morning, said I would be late, then ran to the pet store and got the replacement puppy milk. I smuggled her into the building of the corporation in a pet carrier wrapped in a plastic bag. I begged an employee/friend to stick her under her desk so I could plug in her heating blanket and come and feed her every few hours. Which I did. Her bleeding had lessened but she was not eating well and not peeing or passing stool. I named the little squirrel Agnes after the kind person who hid her all day and kept the heat in her office turned way up high. If the animal was discovered both of us would have been in big trouble.

I managed to keep her alive all day despite my well intentioned but badly executed feeding technique. She started to seem better by the end of the day. I got home late and still didn't have time to figure out my next step which was getting her to a wildlife rehabilitator. The next morning I called someone in the city but she couldn't take her. In the end that was fine because I was nervous about leaving her with someone I didn't know anyway. So I called the wonderful rehabber we have here in Phoenicia, Joanne Rowley. Joanne is a licensed NYS wildlife rehabilitator that I have taken several birds to in the past. She is an amazing person!! I could write a whole story about the work she does and the many hundreds of animals she has cared for and released back into the wild. But again, I digress. She said she would take her and told me how to feed her until I could get her to Phoenicia.

I still had work to do so I couldn't get her to Joanne until later that evening. So I fed her all day and then packed her with bottles filled with warm water for the ride in the car. When I arrived at the house she told me that Agnes was in very bad shape. She was dehydrated, extremely underweight (she thought that she had been out of the nest longer than the day and a half that I had her), had congestion in her lungs and some marks on her that could have been bites. She promised to try and save her (she confirmed that she was a girl) but she didn't know if she would make it. But she had antibiotics and special squirrel milk (made from powder) for her so I breathed a sigh of relief that Agnes was finally in good hands.

I have visited every two or three days since I have dropped her off and happily Agnes has gotten stronger and bigger with each visit. At this point we are confident of her full recovery. And, as luck would have it, Joanne had other squirrels she was rehabilitating that were exactly the same age as Agnes. So when she got a little stronger she was put together with a little boy and when they are fully grown they will be released as a family (in about 6-8 weeks).

I am not sure there is any moral to this story except maybe that my boyfriend is right and I am out of my mind. But in the end I am very happy that I got involved and helped rescue this little girl. I know not everyone agrees, but I think all life is worth saving. But I am sorry if she moves into your attic.




Photo Notes: The photo above this story is of Agnes on the day after I had found her. The photos below the story are of Agnes about 2 1/2 weeks later. She had just about doubled in size by then and continues to grow nicely!