7:30 a.m.: Okay, well, as expected I woke up in the middle of the night to check on the squirrels. Fortunately they were all fine (although I’m not sure how peeved they were at me for waking them up from a nice long snooze). And they all took a decent amount of formula this morning, so I’m feeling a lot better. Now for my own breakfast!
10:15 a.m.: Things definitely seem to be going smoother. It takes each of them a couple of minutes to calm down, but once they do, they seem to settle in and become more relaxed for their feeding. The most stressful part now is listening to one of my cats scratching on the door, wondering why she can’t come in!
1:30 p.m.: Third feeding, no problems.
4:30 p.m.: The squirrels didn’t take in quite as much during this feeding. I suspect it’s because they’ve taken in a good amount already today combined with it being a hot day. I picked up a digital scale today to weigh them (I’m sure the good people at Sur La Table would have been surprised if I’d told them what I was using it for!). Most of them have gained a little weight since yesterday, so that’s good. One lost a little, but since they ate almost nothing yesterday, I’m not going to worry about it for the moment.
8:00 p.m.: The 6:30 feeding went well. One of the females had looked a little dehydrated earlier, so I gave her some Pedialyte between feedings, and it definitely seems to have done the trick.
This next section is not for the squeamish (no blood involved), so feel free to skip ahead. Occasionally, some squirrels decide to suck on each other when there’s no mother around. So one poor little guy’s penis was a little raw and had a scab at the tip, which meant he couldn’t pee. And I could see the urine had built up like a little balloon ready to burst. But I checked my manual and called my squirrel coordinator to reconfirm and, fortunately, was able to solve the problem. It involved warm compresses to remove the scab, which allowed him to urinate, and a little Neosporin to prevent infection. And I’ve put a couple of pieces of apple in their carrier, which hopefully they’ll choose to suck on instead.
But other than that, the day is going well. One more feeding to go, and then I think I’ll sleep much more soundly tonight.