Once upon a time....

Once upon a time we had a squirrel named Squeakers...don't ask me where the name comes from. She didn't make any noise at all...she did get squeals from us though.
Look at Roger--he is gritting his teeth in the picture below. Her little claws are always out and they are needle sharp.
Our arms all had scratches from her running up and down us or jumping from one to the other of us.
I guess I should tell the story of how we came to have her. It was all due to Sarah.

She had went to a friends house to play when she was in 7th or 8th grade....probably 7th. So she was probably around 12 years old. I am almost positive it was November...pretty sure we had her for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was a cold, windy snowy day...but not much accumulation.

Anyway, Sarah had went to her friends house to play...came home and came in the back door and the first thing she said was "Now, Mom, don't be mad!" I had no idea what she was talking about; I sort of expected her to have tore something up or broke something....I mean what can a girl that age do. I mean, she was a good kid. I really couldn't think what she would have done.

So I asked what had happened. She tells me she has a squirrel..."a squirrel?" I ask. she proceeds to tell me that it was moving kind of slow so she took her coat off and threw it over it and caught it. She wasn't bit or hurt. By then I think Roger was in there, so we asked to see it. It was little...maybe 5 or 6 inches long. It had scratches like a cat had had hold of it.

It had to have a cage of some sort...so we got out the cat carrier, or maybe we bought it. I forget what all we put in it that first night...but we would get her out and pet her quite often ....or Sarah may have just kept her out till bedtime. I really don't remember. I just know within a couple days, she was totally at home and not afraid of us at all.

The love of her short life was Roger....she would be quiet all day. Maybe come to see what I was doing every once in a while...but basically stayed to herself. Till Roger came in the door. I would be where I could see her, and she would perk up and listen....and go running to him. Up his legs she would climb.

She would chase him all through the house....I would have to get her so he could take a shower. Other than that, she would almost always be close to him the rest of the night. But the odd thing was, that if one of us left the room, she went with us to see what we were doing, but when we came back to the living room, she would go sit with Roger. Sometimes on him, a lot of the time on the arm of his chair.

She loved apple pie. You just cannot imagine it. Roger sat down to eat a piece of pie one day, and she tried to dig into his mouth to get to it...we gave her a bite of it on her own plate and she sounded just like a little pig. (That is where I got the idea to use an apple to get Mama Squirrel to come to me.) Anyway, I cannot remember what all we fed her--peanuts, walnuts, and I think sunflower seeds. Roger and Sarah happened to go in the woods and ran across some hickory nuts and she was crazy about them also.

Remember how I said that she followed each of us if we left the room, well she was very silent in doing that and one time I stepped on her little paw. She carried it without walking on it and went running to Roger. But she wasn't scared of me or anything...she just wanted Roger.

She died not long after Christmas...we really don't know why. Maybe she had some kind of cold or something we weren't aware of. Or another time she had come up behind me and I didn't realize it and I stepped back and hit her pretty good with my shoe. For a while, I really thought that was what killed her--maybe caused her brain to swell or something because it was only two or three days later that she got sick and died.

Anyway, she was a special little creature that we sure loved....and she loved us. We were all just heartbroken when she died.