Laura Erickson's For the Birds

When my husband Russ and I lived in Madison, Wisconsin, our apartment was burglarized, and it was no laughing matter. But last week when our house was broken into, it turned out to be pretty funny.

We came home from Tommy’s soccer game to discover our dining room screen had been forced in from the outside. Nothing appeared to be missing until I looked at the sunflower seed bucket. Our neighbor and emergency auxiliary backup grandma Mary Tonkin had brought us a pocketful of acorns the day before, and now half were missing and the other half had been chewed to bits. Katie found one acorn wedged into the piano cover, Joey found two in the Lego drawer, and I found several buried in the soil of my house plants. Clearly the burglar was Chuckie the squirrel.

Chuckie, also known as Charles Dickens McFeely, was an orphaned baby gray squirrel desperately searching out a replacement mama after his was hit by a car in May, and chose Russ as a likely candidate. He was a tiny little mite whose eyes had only been open for a day or two when Russ found him and brought him to me. Dan’s Feed Bin in Superior had squirrel replacement milk, and we soon had the skeletal figure plumped out.

Baby squirrels are jolly fun to raise, though because it’s so easy to do it wrong, or to make them into pets instead of wild creatures, a state permit is required. One of the problems with nursing squirrels is that they’re vulnerable to respiratory infections. They eat with so much gusto that unless you’re careful, milk foams out their nose and can lodge in the lungs. Cow’s milk and human baby formula cause serious diarrhea. And growing squirrels also need a carefully balanced diet with plenty of Vitamin D or they’ll develop rickets–they look perfectly normal until they break bones as they learn to climb.

Fortunately, everything with baby Chuckie worked out fine. He was housebroken, using our bathtub for his toilet. At night, he burrowed into our dirty clothes hamper to sleep, and took naps snuggled under my shirt. Joey called him Chuck, and I kept referring to him as the little dickens, so we logically named him Charles DIckens. Once he started charging around the house at top speed, scurrying up furniture and draperies, he reminded us of Mr. McFeely, who says “Speedy delivery!” in Mr. Rogers’s neighborhood. Hence the final moniker of Charles Dickens McFeely.

When we started Chuckie on solids, to ensure both a natural diet and that he’d become truly wild, we started letting him outdoors. His own nest tree happened to be the box elder right outside our dining room, and he quickly took to sleeping in it. When we were gone for over two weeks on vacation, he suspiciously refused to come in for my mother-in-law to feed him, but as soon as we returned, he charged in for a visit. Now he lives outdoors and completely avoids strange people, but comes in for a short visit just about every day. He likes drinking water out of my cupped hands, and hides peanuts throughout the house, but no longer takes naps snuggled against me.

Birders are supposed to dislike squirrels. There are whole books written on how to keep them out of our feeders. But I have a weakness for them. Chuckie’s welcome here as long as he wants, though if he insists on visiting when we’re not at home, I suppose we’ll eventually have to get him a key.

I’m Laura Erickson, speaking For the Squirrels.