A few days ago, Shane and I had the most amazing encounter with a surprising wild guest who was stuck in our fireplace!!
I promise this is not just “clickbait talk” – you will want to watch the full 2:24 minutes of this if you are a nature lover…
At the end, Shane had tears and I was bawling my eyes out… (Tears of JOY!)
Behind the scenes stuff…
The outpouring of love has been beautiful to witness. So many people shed tears of joy for this magical reunion and re-shared our facebook video post.
(Then the CBC reposted our video yesterday and nearly doubled the views!)
Compassion can spark creativity and effort in beautiful ways…
Shane and I are so grateful for the outcome and the chance to witness/support such a reunion!
Here are some elements not mentioned in the video…
~ When we thought it was a rat in our fireplace, we originally played rat sounds from youtube to draw it out but that didn’t work (since it wasn’t a rat). This later inspired the use of baby squirrel youtube sounds to draw out the mother…
~ What worked to draw the critter out of the fireplace, was putting a light source (headlamp) in the trap box.
~ We thought that the mama squirrel may have nested on our roof so we wanted to release the baby squirrel in the front yard where she could find it. However, four crows were prowling the roof and front balcony of our house with a determined gleam in their eyes. (as Shane and another friend commented – a “murder” of crows was being organized)
~ Releasing the baby in the backyard (with no sounds) didn’t work so after the crows were gone, we tried the front yard with sounds.
~ In the 3 years we’ve lived here, nothing has ever fallen down the enclosed chimney top into the fireplace but we suspect there might be a small opening created by the woodpecker who’s been pecking at our chimney top for the last 2 months!!!
Some things we learned (thanks to the internet):
1) Avoid touching wildlife even if it seems friendly/tame. Wild critters are known to carry various diseases, ticks, fleas and bacteria despite their adorable appearances.
2) Wear gloves if you must handle baby wildlife as some animals will not retrieve their young if the scent of humans is detected on their babies.
3) Reunion with the mother is ideal but if you cannot find the mother after many hours, the second choice is to bring the orphaned critter to a wildlife rescue center! Baby critters require special care and the wrong care/foods/liquids could harm it.