Woman Gets Help from Wild Mama Squirrel to Save Orphaned Baby
Rebecca Lombardi was caring for an orphaned baby squirrel but grew concerned when he wasn’t thriving as he should. After bottle-feeding him for several days, she realized she needed to find a solution or risk losing him. That’s when she came up with an idea—see if a mama squirrel she’d been regularly feeding would adopt him as her own.
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“Mama squirrels will often adopt orphans, and knowing this, I took a chance with a little one I have been struggling with for the past few days. I was hoping having him adopted by a wild squirrel would help ensure his survival,” she wrote in the video description shared by ViralHog.
So Lombardi brought the tiny, pink baby outside to a large tree in her neighborhood. After spotting the mama squirrel higher up in the branches, she gently held out the baby along with two pecans at the base of the trunk.
“He’s eating, but he’s not growing like he should be,” Lombardi said of the baby squirrel out loud in the video. “And sometimes it just happens. Some baby squirrels do really well when they’re being hand-raised, and others don’t,” she added, indicating her experience with wildlife care.
After a few minutes of patient coaxing, the mama squirrel poked her head around the tree trunk, sniffed the baby, and, much to Lombardi’s relief, grabbed him gently in her mouth and carried him away.
“I don’t use the term miracle very often, but in a situation like this I think it’s 100% appropriate,” Lombardi said. “This isn’t something I do a lot because raising babies isn’t easy for any mother, and the last thing I want to do is overburden a mama squirrel. However, in this case, I think the little one has much better odds of survival now. Thank goodness for small everyday miracles and the kindness of a mama squirrel.”
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