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Thursday, February 9, 2012

A Squirrel Named Charlie

Have you ever had one of those moments in life when something just falls right out of the sky? Not expected, or necessarily wanted, yet there it was. Seems deep right... Well in my case, this came quite literally....

If you come from a family like mine you'd understand what "we're going to work this saturday" meant. For us it meant that we'd end up moving piles of gravel, digging up random parts of the yard, and of course the "annual moving of the stack of wood around the yard." In this case however, one beautiful saturday we were tirelessly manipulating stacks of raw materials in our yard when the unexpected happened.... A baby squirrel decided he wasn't quite satisfied with his little tree hut anymore so he toppled out of the 60 foot tree to our "worksite".

Out of all the strange things to happen to us on our saturdays I didn't expect a baby squirrel to fly out of the sky. It turned out that our weekly shenanigans had disturbed the squirrel out of its nest. The squirrel didn't seem much more than a couple days old. It's eyes weren't open, it's body looked a bit more like a fuzzy rat carcass, and it moved like worm. Being the compassionate animal lover that I am I nudged it with my boot to see if it was still breathing. It was...



At that point, my "get out of work" instincts kicked in. I immediately showed the squirrel to my dad and ran inside. From that moment on, I nurtured the squirrel and took care of it. I eventually stumbled upon the name "Charlie" because I thought it was appropriate for the lil creepy lookin animal. My mom and my Omama (Czchech for grandmother) helped with their maternal advice and soon the baby squirrel started moving around a bit. I'm sure many of you can remember the first time you took care of a baby animal, and of that warm fuzzy feeling inside when you knew you were saving an animal from its death.

All feelings aside, it pooped all over the little box, bit me when I fed it, and threw up milk and seeds on me... After about 2 months of babying it, it was time to take Charlie outside. It thoroughly enjoyed itself on our porch and I realized it would soon be time to let go of my baby.... sadface.



Well anyways...he was a cute lil' fellow, but he was sure pretty annoying. After about 6 months of taking care of him, one day I let him out and he never came back. I never really knew what happened to him since then but every once in a while I see one of those obnoxious squirrels running around our yard and wonder....is that Charlie?! I guess it's just my mind trying to make myself feel special, rather than assuming he instantly died when he entered the "wild" due to my babying and human nurture. Oh well...it was one of those experiences you laugh at but don't tell everyone because they'd look at you strange...It was an invigorating experience to say the least.

Makes me wonder though, what kind of strange animal stories did you have while you were a kid? I'm kinda a tidbit scared but I'd like to know ;) Godbless!









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