Squirrels Just Wanna Have Fun, Too

Thought I'd give Soupy a little break today and talk about Squirrel Girl. Her name was originally "Shadrach" because she lived through a fire . . . and I thought she was a he!  It's not  easy to tell with a baby squirrel whose eyes aren't open yet.

I was attending a "Cereal Walk" (as we lovingly called them) in a little mountain community in Oklahoma. You may know what a "Cake Walk" is. An old fashioned money-raising pot luck supper where the numbers from 1 to "whatever" are written in a circle on the floor. Folks pay to walk around the circle to the beat of some perky song. When the music stops you stop on whatever number you've reached. The leader draws a number from a hat, and if you're on it, you get a home-made cake, baked by one of the community ladies. Great fun.

But this community evidently had a shortage of cake-baking-little-old-ladies! (And perky music.) There were some fine cakes to be won. But there were lots of boxes of "Little Debbie" cakes and even "Kellogg's Corn Flakes". We thought that was kind of amusing and started calling them Cereal Walks.

Back to the story. This particular evening, the men from the local VFD came in, still in their fire-fighting garb to grab a bit to eat. While fighting a potential forest fire they heard a squeak coming from a parched area. A baby squirrel was crying - surrounded on all sides by a grass fire. Those sweet guys rescued it and brought it to the Cereal Walk. Naturally I ended up taking it home with me. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

She smelled of fire. Her hair was parched and the end of her tail was badly burned. (She ended up losing half of her tail - which gave her a really distinctive look.) Her eyes weren't open yet and she craved the warmth of a human's touch.

So I took her to bed with me, keeping her covered with my hand. One night she became extremely restless. After chasing her from one end of the bed to the other (under the covers) I finally turned on the light on my end table. She scrambled up on my chest and stared at me with her brand-new eyes. I was the first thing she ever saw. I was "Mama".

Well, Mama and Pappa had already made arrangements to go to a huge evangelistic conference in Beaumont. What to do with Shadrach/Squirrel Girl? She required constant care. So . . . I took her along. She had her own little bag, packed with bedding, medicines, two eyedroppers, powdered squirrel milk, and water. I didn't want to be caught in any situation where I couldn't care for "the baby".

During the day and at the motel it was no challenge. But I spent three long evenings at this conference - held in a huge Colosseum - with her in my purse. I was panicky she'd get out. She'd have caused chaos in that crowd, running over ladies' feet. And there was no doubt in my mind, I'd never find her again if that happened.

So, I kept my purse on my lap, with my hand stuck in it. Holding a sleeping squirrel. The large man to my left eyed me suspiciously. And often. He probably thought I had a weapon in my purse. I was afraid if I confessed to him what it was, he'd complain and I'd be thrown out. So I just smiled innocently when he cast a wary glance my way. Just your everyday ditsy woman.

I think it's safe to assume that Squirrel-Girl is the only squirrel in the world to have ever attended a three day evangelistic conference - even if she did sleep through the whole thing.

Possum Play Dates

I can only think of two of God's living creatures I could kill without blinking an eye. One's a roach and the other's a mosquito. Rats, mice, moles, snakes and spiders (excepting, of course, black widows and brown recluses) fall under the heading of "things I would rather not cohabit with, and I'll be glad to escort them from the premises rather than kill them". Sometimes they have to be escorted with a great deal of finese. I coax spiders onto a piece of paper and throw them out. I grab daddy-long-legs by one leg and toss them out. Rats . . . well, I've never had the pleasure. I'm not sure how I'd handle it.

But that's just me. And I'm aware that there aren't too many like me. When I mention having raised possums, I get a lot of "eew"s. Especially from women.

I had two ladies drop in to visit me one day. While we sat and talked a spider crawled up the wall behind me. One lady screamed. My husband ran to the rescue, took off his shoe and did the poor creature in. (I held a memorial for it that evening . . . kidding.) The other lady excused herself to go to the bathroom. She screamed and came running back out, pointing toward the door. "A frog! A frog!"

We live in the country, so sometimes we see creatures in the house that city folk don't. But I swear, this is the first time, in all of my life, I've found a frog inside my house. There sat a little brown tree frog on the toilet seat, just as happy as a dead hog in the sunshine. I scooped it up in my hand and took it to the back door. As I passed through the living room, the ladies were collecting their purses and heading for the front door.

I put the little fellow outside on a tree, came back in, washed my hands, and walked outside to say good-bye. They were already in the car with the doors shut and windows up. I motioned for one to roll her window down, and she mouthed the words, "Where's the frog?"

Golly Gee! They haven't been back.

I said all that to say this. I wonder what would have happened had Soupy decided to take a stroll through the living room about that time?

Soupy had a friend. I met a lady who, like me, loves possums. She had one named Opie. He had to have been the most spoiled possum ever to live. He had a cage I think must have been designed for a tiger. She kept it at her place of business, so he could accompany her to work every day.  He traveled to and from work with her in a back-pack. He went on vacations. Been to Vegas among other places. Definitely more well-traveled than Soupy (or me).

I took Soupy by to visit a time or two. And I got Amy's permission to publish her picture with Opie. (See the bottom of the page.) Remember I promised to prove to you that all possums do not look alike. Notice that Opie and Soupy have very different features. I promise you, to this day, I could pick Soupy out of a passel of possums. And I'm sure Amy could do the same with Opie.

I heard that "Eewww!" Knock it off.

Poor Baby!

Soupy was so tiny when I brought him home, I didn't see how he could possibly be any bother. Right!

I fed him and set my clock for a couple of hours hence, to feed him again. Then I put him in a warm box with lots of rags to cuddle in. I put the box in the shower stall - just in case he got out and had to do his business. More rags in the shower, so if he left the box, he could find another place to cuddle. I closed the glass doors on the shower and went to bed confident he could get into no trouble.

When I went back for his first feeding, he was in the box, snug as a bug. Next feeding, same thing.

Then came morning. I went to his box, expecting to find a toasty warm possum, possibly with a little mess in the box. What I found was an empty box. And an empty shower stall. And as far as I could tell, an empty bathroom.

Panic!

I checked every nook and cranny in the bathroom for possible escape routes. Nothing. I screamed for help. Dee came running. We searched the house. But Soupy was obviously gone. I was in tears. Of course, I was checking close to the floor. He was a baby. How could he possibly be up high?

Never underestimate a possum, regardless of how young. I stood in the bathroom and turned in a circle. Suddenly I was eye to eye with Soupy, peering out at me from the towel  shelf over the commode.

There was no way out of the shower stall except to shimmy the thin rubber gasket around the door. Then do a balancing act across the slick aluminum top of the shower door frame to the rough cedar bathroom door frame. Across about two feet of sheet-rocked wall and onto the shelf. Hey . . . I don't know. He was a regular Houdini.

I started putting his box on it's side, in the bathroom, with the commode lid down (so he wouldn't flush himself) and the shower door open. He decided the shower stall was his bathroom. We laid newspapers in it at night and Voila! he was potty trained. Never slipped up. Ever.

So, we gave him the run of the house at night. Not really a good idea! But possums like to poke around at night and sleep though the day. So we gave it a try. What harm could he do? <G> We "Soupy-proofed" the house each night at bedtime.

One night we heard a thump. He was in front of the dryer when we ran into the laundry room - and limping. I'd made the mistake of putting a tall basket of dirty clothes next to the dryer. The best we could figure was; he'd climbed up the basket to the top of the dryer, tried to go back down the slick front of the dryer . . . and plunged to the floor.

Imagine how guilty I felt when his limp didn't go away. I took him to the vet where an x-ray revealed he had a broken leg. I'm telling you all this to my shame, because had he not been so doggone cute, and had I not been such a mushy-hearted fool, I'd have built an outdoor cage for him and tried harder to not imprint him. That's why it's not a good idea to try to raise one. Even the best intentioned person - if they are tenderhearted and uneducated on the species - will probably go wrong.

Fortunately, I lived in a state where it was legal to harbor possums, so I was able to find a vet with "possum-experience". It cost hundreds of dollars to have his leg operated on and set. And there was a five-week period when he had to wear a cast on his leg. I started hearing horror stories from every direction about wild animals who'd chewed their own leg off to escape a cast. SO - for five weeks, I slept on the floor with my hand in his "cave" so I'd know if he started chewing. Not my favorite five weeks!

And, we bonded. Oh, did we bond.

In the wild, possums are loners. They don't live in families, except for the female and her young, and then only until they're able to go off on their own.

Unlike dogs and cats, possum mamas don't worry a lot about their young. Mama says to the kids, "Keep up, because if you get lost, I'm not coming to look for you." Which might be why people are constantly finding orphaned possums.

So now you know why I ended up raising my second possum to adulthood and beyond. Soupy led a pretty good life -  by possum standards.

Next week I'm going to tell you about Soupy's play dates! If you think all possums look alike, you're in for a surprise!