Who can forget Little Sister? She was one of the first patients at WTS, and arived with her brother. They were about 6-7 weeks old.

They were successfully released in mid-May, but still come by for snacks, as mentioned in the previous blog post, this is natural as young squirrels depend on their mums at this time of year.

But Little Sister always chewed a little bit strangely, and she was very aggressive (discussed a few posts ago). I brought her to the vets when she was about 3 1/2 months old for suspected teeth issues- about 6 weeks ago- and she got the all clear.

This is how she turned up yesterday:

As you can see her incisors, or front teeth, are horribly deformed. It is called a "malocclusion;" normally in rodents, whose teeth never stop growing, the bottom & top incisors rub against each other and naturally wear each other down. But if they are misaligned, they aren't worn down but continue growing, and this is what you have here. The animal can die a painful death of starvation and the teeth will even grow into the brain case.

In Little Sister's case, one bottom tooth had pierced the roof of her mouth, and the other, the one on the outside that you can see here, had caused a sore on her cheek. Her upper teeth had grown in a circle and were about the pierce her skull.

She was a flea-ridden skeleton and incredibly weak and massively dehydrated (you can see her folds of skin that are all folded up as they aren't plumped up by the body's water content). I suspected that her teeth were becoming maloccluded from a breif look a few weeks ago and I tried to catch her with no luck. Then I didn't see her for the last 10 days and assumed that she had gone into the forest to die. But she turned up last night and was so weak that I was able to catch her....though not without her protesting the best she could.

The vet was able to trim her teeth today, and the Xray looked like her jaw joint was OK, but the jaw clearly want to go to one side...whether this is because the muscles are strained by the teeth, or there is a soft tissue injury that caused the malocclusion the first place is unknown.There is no way of knowing if her teeth will grow straight again. If they don't she will not be able to be released. But for now she will stay at WTS for several months so that I can keep an eye on her.

However, as mentioned, she is so agressive (probably because she has always been on some degree of pain), that if I can't handle her to treat her, it is uncertain whether she will be able to be looked after. As such, I have decided to try my best to "train' her to some degree so I will be able to handle her as needed over the coming months. This way I will be able to check her teeth, give her medication, nurse her, etc...

She is on a special diet of warm peanut flavoured formula, applesauce, small banana slices among other things. It was a real joy to see her able to eat a piece of banana today after the vets.

Menawhile, speaking of squirrel food, here's a cute picture of Lil'Mo at her breakfast platter!

And one last picture- this is a scene of a squirrel break-in at WTS! Amazing how they went straight for the walnuts (seen here spilled on floor)- they found them and pushed the jar over the counter and it opened to reveal is luxury cache!

Just look at the progress! These are pictures of the little runt. She is still about 25g smaller than the biggest, but she's getting stronger!

But sadly, it hasn't all been good news. The one little girl who came on her own didn't make it, and one of the 5 also passed on. Both appear to have died due to problems with digestion. As previously mentioned, this is all too common with baby bunnies. But so far so good with the other 4! Though one is on antibiotics to promote a sterile gut as there were signs it was having digestion problems, and I may put another one on tomorrow. They are all getting bigger and stronger, and it is so cute how their ears have unfolded the last couple of days! But they are still in the danger zone. Over the next couple of weeks they will be graduating to solid food, and this can really screw up their tummies. I've started them on baby food (as you can see in above picture!), so I'm going to try to go nice & slowly and hopefully that will help their tummies stay well!

This kinda gives you an idea of how tiny they are- that monster thing on the left is my foot! 

And this is one next to my bike! It is so cute, as it actually kinda hopped over to it. I think in the next couple of days I might see some hopping starting: ADORABLE!  :)

This is little brother in my kitchen. I was about to feed him, when he found this piece of antler- purchased especially for he & little sister (to chew on and get nutrients)- and immediately picked it up! He has been sleeping out of the cage (it is open for them to come & go) for the last 4 nights or so. I was so worried, but he is back every morning for breakfast! Little sister spent the first few evenings without him VERY NEEDY. I was torn between ignoring her, to help train her to be wild, and sweeping her up and letting her sleep in my sweater. As it's been almost freezing here at night, I did allow her some time to get warm in my sweater, but balanced it out with ignoring her. And I think that this was successful as the last 2 nights she has been out of the cage as well! But we still have some girl time once in a while, as seen below!

I was hunting for fossils, trilobites to be exact, the other day, and look who I happened to come across! This lovely little toad was watching me the whole time and almost completely camouflaged.  He was King of the Quarry, no contest! Now, we just need the WTS reptile & amphibian expert, Ingrid, to tell us what species it is. Ingrid??

Oh! Who is in the tree? See if you can guess! I can't even believe how grown up they are. They are ~10 weeks today. I have moved them into a bigger cage located outside. 3-4 more weeks until they are released. I also made them a nice comfy nestbox which they seem very happy in! Pictures to come. I'm glad that they are more self-sufficient now, though they are still being nursed a couple of times a day, as I just got a nest full of 5 orphan 4 day old cottontails which I foresee taking up a lot of my time! Also, tiny bunny has not been well, so there are feedings and fluid administration around the clock...in fact I have to be up in just a few hours, so I better wrap this up!

Look! They can even hang upside down and munch on things!...Even rocks...???! Actually, I noticed that they do like to nibble on rocks and dirt, so perhaps they get certain minerals this way.

What a big boy! The baby squirrels are growing up! They are about 10 weeks old now and have almost doubled in size since coming to WTS, they are now just over 1/2 pound each. I've been putting their cage outside in good weather and taking them out on the hammock, but today, after watching squirrel mum's with their youngsters in the WTS forest, I followed their example, and gave the little ones a nudge to explore. Little brother went straight up a tree! After a few up & downs, little sister followed him. It looked like they were having the best time, they went so high, and I was so proud of them!! They really are little wild squirrels which made me so happy to see. I don't really understand why people want ot keep wild animals as pets when it is so magical to see them run around and making sense of their wonderful wild world. Then we went to collect greens for the bunnies and the little squirrels were so tired they fell asleep in my hoodie!

But there are not always happy success stories in wildlife rehabilitation. This dear little Eastern chipmunk was brought in a couple of days ago. You can see how tiny she was. She was about 3 weeks old, and still had her eyes closed. Apparently some people had found her and said that her mother would not take her back. This rarely happens and makes me wonder whether this really was the mother, or perhaps the mother knew that there was something wrong with her. Baby chipmunks will also rarely leave the nest unless they are abandoned/orphaned. If this was the case, it is likely she had some brothers and sisters who were still in the nest and did not make it. Apparently she did alright with the people for a week or so, but they brought her in when she was suddenly failing to thrive. We kept her warm, and gave her antibiotics in case she had an infection, perhaps pneumonia from inhaling formula into her lungs. I fed her every two hours to help keep her weight and hydration up. She seemed to rally yesterday morning, but by last night I was worried. She crawled off her heating pad sometime this morning and passed on. Apparently many baby animals will leave their heat source before dying. It's their way of letting go I suppose. But in her short life she was very cared for and made a lot of people happy!

You looking at me?? The babies were transferred to a bigger climbing cage a few days ago. They were intimidated by it at first, but it is amazing how fast they have caught onto the whole climbing thing! They are also starting to get better about eating solid food. They especially like fruit- grapes, bananas, berried, oranges- banana chips and granola bars! It is really amazing watching how they are developing, and they are getting more and more confident about their world. We go outside everyday and they love hiding in my jacket, looking outside, jumping back in my jacket and running around in excitement, looking outside again, etc...etc...!

They are also finally getting to know what wood is. I put some sticks in their cage and they were very curious about these new things- see below. It is important to introduce them to all of these things so that they are ready for release in a little more than a month.

And little sister got upset with me today when I was checking on them (I had put their cage outside), which is a really good sign that their wild instincts are there and that they will be ready to go. You can't take these things personally after all!

In other good news, the head-tilt rabbit is now back in the wild! He was getting more and more skiddish and hard-to-handle, which is all good natural bunny behavior, and his head-tilt was getting less pronounced. Today I weighed him, discovered he had gained over 300g since he has been at WTS, about 30% of what he weighed when he arrived! I then let him have a hop and discovered that he was getting around really well. So I sent him on his way. Sometimes you release wild animals before they are 100% better, as the stress of keeping them in the cage to get the last 10% of healing is actually more detrimental to their well being. I am confident that he will do just great!

And another little tiny rabbit arrived at WTS today.She is about 4 weeks old, old enough to be on her own, but she was caught and hurt by a cat. See WTS webpage on "Cats & Wildlife". It's amazing that she survived and even more amazing that the vets were able to sew up her wounds. Bunny skin is so delicate that often the skin will not support stitches.

She was losing weight in the hospital, so has come to WTS to recover. She is still on various medications and needs fluid therapy to keep her hydrated, but fingers crossed she will be good to go in a few weeks! Stay tuned for pictures!