Thing that happened to me today #14

I went around calling myself the beastmaster Sunday afternoon. First thing that happened to make me do this occurred while watering the plants in the backyard. From about 15 feet away I could see a little pink thing writhing around on the ground near the base of our big silver maple. It was this:


It was a baby squirrel. Disgustingly adorable. It was so helpless, eyes not even open yet, must have been just born. This is the day after a big storm so the nest must have been damaged. By the way, the nest is about 20-30 feet off the ground, so this little guy (like 2 inches long) survived quite a tumble. I couldn't believe it was still alive (lucky the dogs hadn't been out too). It was just wriggling around helpless and I didn't know what to do, so I coddled it in my shirt keeping it warm until Sandy got back. Then I made her take it to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center (which St. Paul is very fortunate to have) where it will be raised until it is old enough to live on its own, then released back into the wild.

Ten minutes after Sandy left with the squirrel, I went down in our basement. While I was there I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. Sure enough, it was a rodent of some sort (mouse I'm pretty sure, but it had a bit of a rattish look). Anyway, the thing had jumped right up near me and was just sitting there looking at me. So I slowly walked towards it. All the while thinking about what the hell I would do if it didn't dash off and hide in all our junk as I expected it to. Sure enough it just sat there and did nothing, so I figured I'd give grabbing it by the tip of the tail with my bare hands a shot. Damn if I didn't grab it:


I kind of thought it wouldn't be able to pull itself up while dangling from its tail, but sure enough it could, and did. So there was that instant moment of panic where I thought I probably shouldn't get bit or scratched by a wild rodent, but I held my ground and didn't drop it. It certainly did try to bite and scratch a little, but it was so small I felt nothing and it did nothing to me. Then it calmed down right away and was actually kind of cool. I put it in a box with some nuts and considered letting Solana keep it as a pet, then let it go outside - in my neighbors yard (:

So, after these two incidents (not to mention the earlier raccoon incident), I was indeed the beastmaster.