Just when you think you’ve got things under control…

I discovered my big guy is being sucked on again, and I caught one of the culprits in the act—the larger female. So in addition to the Tabasco technique, I looked up some other remedies in the manual. One of them is to remove the squirrel doing the sucking about an hour before a feeding and putting her in a separate shoebox with a big piece of apple to use as a pacifier instead. No problem.

I didn’t want to leave her alone in the box, though, so I put the other female in with her, thinking she wasn’t as likely a target. She’s one of the smaller squirrels whose eyes haven’t opened yet. So imagine my surprise when I went in later to feed them and discovered the little girl OUTSIDE the shoebox! She was sitting on the heating pad, smelling the cage.

My heart leapt into my throat as I realized what could have happened, since the cage and shoebox are on a card table, and if she’d wandered over to the edge… But fortunately, she didn’t, and she’s fine and I won’t be doing that again without finding something more secure to put them in.

Oh, and as for the apple trick? It certainly seems to have been a good suggestion, if you look at this picture of the slice after the “sucker” got a hold of it:

More videos coming tomorrow…