24th February 2008 : There are squirrels in our tractor, what are we gonna do?
Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 08:58PM It’s not often you open up your tractor and find a maternity wing inside…but then again, Tsavo is always full of surprises.
The other day we had our great friend Nick staying (who was also Best Man at our wedding), when he and Ian decided to take the tractor for a spin - so to speak, for the tractor is a cumbersome beast. When they returned, they wanted to give the tractor a once-over, and opened up the air filter to clean it out. What they found inside took them aback, for never before has the air filter been so clogged up with debris…They started to pull out an intertwined, dried mass of vegetation when they suddenly realized that there was something inside it…and on closer inspection, right in the middle of the grassy, woody bundle, they found two tiny baby Tree Squirrels, just a day or two old, if that.
How on earth they had survived the drive, I don’t know, but they were both still breathing…
Click any image to enlarge
So what to do now? Should we take them inside, nurse them with milk from a syringe, and raise them to adulthood? Should we replace them in the tractor, and hope that the mother would return despite all the disruption – in other words, let nature take its course?
When you live amongst wild animals, you learn that though these decisions can sometimes be tough, letting nature take its course is usually the best option; so Ian and Nick wrapped the diminutive squirrels back up in their nest, and replaced them inside the tractor, hoping for the best.
Replacing the nest in the tractor
Click any image to enlarge
In this case, there was a happy ending to the story, for the next morning when we returned to check on the babies, the nest was empty. Being hidden inside the tractor’s air filter, with such a narrow convoluted entrance, this could only mean that the mother squirrel (as opposed to a predator) had returned and moved her offspring to somewhere quieter and safer, and we were happy to know that. After surviving a drive around Kulafumbi stuck inside our tractor’s air filter, those little mites certainly deserved a second chance at life.
I guess we now know where this nesting material was headed!
View more images of Squirrels and other 'small fry' around our Kulafumbi home...
Reader Comments (27)
Hey Buford - I changed the name of my RSS feed as you suggested - it'll now read "Wild Kenya Diary RSS" - hope that helps!
Squirrels! I don't know if I have to be so excited to see one of these and get to touch them or I will be scared, won't they bite, especially the mother seeing you touching her little ones? I am just curious. And you've been to Africa, you know, this 2011, Cape Town has been chosen as the #1 destination in the world and camps bay is its premier destination, just thought it will be cool to share that to you. :-)