I thought it was dead, but Mrs. L.A. said it was still moving. I was going to dispatch it with snakeshot, but couldn’t find my H&R 999 immediately. The squirrel seemed to be perking up, so I put it on top of the shed in the back yard. It isn’t moving around much, but it is moving on the top of the shed.
Creamsicle was a stray who adopted us. She must have developed hunting skills, and she has demonstrated them with birds and mice. But a squirrel? She never seemed to be interested. Besides that, she has a tiny little mouth and she’s not a very big kitty. And the squirrels are alert and fast. It never occurred to us that she would or could catch one.
The squirrel hadn’t moved since I posted an hour ago. I went out to assess whether its hindquarters were functional, and whether it would have to be euthanised. When I set up the ladder, it ran to a corner of the shed. When I went to that corner, it ran to another corner. When I went to that corner, I could see its hind legs were working as it scampered over the roof. It jumped into a nearby tree.
Years ago I had a friend who had a small (5 or 6 pounds) ball of fluff female kitty. She regularly brought home prey as large as herself or larger (I heard reports of rabbits). They used to joke that some day she was going to bring home a deer. I think it was a joke.
Anyway, it’s never safe to assume what a cat thinks it can tackle, and what it can successfully tackle.
I’m assuming a cat. If so, hope this isn’t the beginning of dozens of former squirrels brought home and dropped onto your pillow as trophies (Mr. Morris’s favorite trick).
ps: Mr. Morris is a cat. (Sorry, just a pet peeve = OPs that make you guess acronyms or genders… or species.)
The squirrel has remained in the afore-mentioned tree, grasping onto the trunk. It finally, just now, moved to a horizontal board that’s on the tree for some reason.
The squirrels in my backyard avoid the ground whenever possible. They must have seen what happened to the rabbit and, just recently, the duck that thought they could escape Demon Dog.
The squirrel eventually made its way up the trunk into the branches. I hope it lives.
Our back yard has a drop-off down to a creek. Mrs. L.A. went to look for the squirrel on the back side of the tree and fell down the top part of the drop-off. Fortunately, the blackberry bushes kept her from rolling all the way down. But it took a while to get her disentangled, and she’s pretty scratched up. She says she’s never going to go there again. She says she’s ‘letting the squirrel go’. If it survives, it survives. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But she’s not going to look for it.
