Squirrel Story
In July of 2009, a female squirrel made a nest outside of one of our apartment windows. We’ve watched her raise three little families over the last 12 months.
My wife Michelle and I have a small empty room in our apartment where Michelle can quietly practice yoga. This room also contains two windows, one of which leads out to the fire escape. This fire escape window has a metal/mesh security gate on the outside (for, well, security purposes) so we rarely ever open that window, and the blinds remain down most of the time.
One day I walked into the yoga room, and through the blinds I saw a huge wad of stuff in the lower right corner of the window, just outside the glass, but on the inside of the metal security gate. “Who the hell stuffed all of that crap into our window?!” I thought.
I took a closer look, only to see what was really happening: A squirrel had made a nest there, and she was giving birth to her babies right then, right in front of my eyes!
She had three tiny little naked pink babies. When she was done cleaning up, she flipped over onto her back, and scooped the babies up onto her belly where they could nurse. If one slid off to the side, she’d pick it up with her mouth and place it back on her upturned belly.
The next day, I raised the blinds slowly, and took the first set of pictures (see gallery). Then I made a cardboard (foamcore, really) blind to cover the window, while leaving one or two viewing ports.
That was all in July of 2009, and as of August 2010, she’s on her third batch of little ones since moving into our window.
You should check out the pictures in the photo gallery, or see the videos on the video page.
