Just when I thought the season was nearing the end and I might be able to catch up on sleep and other parts of my life, the last summer litters of babies started to arrive! Here are the stories on a few of them.
This is Bunchowski. He is an Eastern cottontail, and came to me at only 4 days old. He's about 3 1/2 weeks old now. Anyone who has been following this blog knows how incredibly difficult it is to keep these tiny ones alive, but Bunchowski was a real fighter! However, like my other tiny ones that survived to this age, it appears that he may be a victim of metabolic bone disease; his right arm broke a week ago (you can see it wrapped up in the picture) after jumping a few inches. But he is bright and alert and is almost weaned and LOVES cilantro! He is almost 4oz.
And this little lady is a Southern Flying squirrel. Her name is Lady Sedgwick and she weights 20g, or about 2/3 of an oz. Baby flyers are a funny shape- they are about 1/3 head, 1/2 tail, and have a little body in between. She was found when a cat walked up to its owner with her tail hanging out of its mouth. She suffered a few injuries, and is now on antibiotics and is doing really well. If you all remember, Amelia, my last little flyer, came to me with suspected neurological problems. And comparing Lady's behavior to Amelia's at the same age (she is about 4-5 weeks old) confirms this: Lady is so much more "with it" at this age, and has even decided to wean herself!
And these two cuties are 4-5 week old Grey squirrels. They are "Soixante neuf" (on the right) and "Soixante dix," or 69 & 70- their patient numbers (but it sounded so much better in French!)- and were both found wandering on their own flea ridden and thin. 69 is a little girl. And the day she came in, 70 arrived later that day. They are not related, but the same size and instantly snuggled and adopted each other as siblings! After only 24 hours of warmth, snuggling and TLC, their tails started fluffing up! :)
WTS also welcomed another little Virginia Opossum. She was in a wonderful local bakery/lunch place for a week raiding jelly bellies. And she arrived with green poop to proove it! She had some bad abrasions around her neck, but they look OK. She'll stay for a few weeks to get her nutrition back on track and to grow a bit bigger before release.
