Meet my Squirrels!

I have two right now. Both were rescued by my mom 4-5 years back when they fell off a tree during a storm. We didn't think they'd survive because they were nothing more than new born pink flesh when they came! We literally reared them up like kids, feeding them milk with the cut edge of a straw, staying up all night to make sure they slept well. Now we look at them all big and grown up, it's probably how parents feel seeing their children! Lol

We started out with three, but one of them passed away due to old age. Now we're left with the really fat lady Bhombol and the cute guy Gogol! Bhombol came to us one year before Gogol so she's the older one. They are allowed to roam about freely in the house (I simply will not have them put in cage!), eat and sleep when they please. Gogol is the friendlier one. He's like an animated soft toy! When he wants to be petted (which is almost always) he'll hunt us down and climb onto us, and when he feels he's had enough for the moment, he'll walk off.

Here's a few pictures of them on this link.
My Loves

Those are so adorable! I never knew you could raise them indoors as pets. Had you ever considered releasing them back into the wild? Or is it not recommended once they've grown up indoors? We've always fed squirrels in our back yard, but never brought them into our house. Although sometimes they would get fussy and stand at our door if we didn't put any food out for them yet.

(09-08-2013, 07:58 PM)ohiotom76 Wrote: Those are so adorable! I never knew you could raise them indoors as pets. Had you ever considered releasing them back into the wild? Or is it not recommended once they've grown up indoors? We've always fed squirrels in our back yard, but never brought them into our house. Although sometimes they would get fussy and stand at our door if we didn't put any food out for them yet.

We didn't set them free in the sense we didn't let them go away. But we do allow them to walk about in our terraced garden every other day. We live in an apartment so we don't have a backyard, unfortunately. They play on the terrace, climb around the shrubs and plants, eat and nibble if they find some food, but they always come back. We have a fine net acting as a ceiling so we're not worried about birds attacking them or anything. They walk around the house as they please, they know where to find the food. We don't need to control them anymore!

Sweet, I wasn't sure if it was a situation where if they are raised indoors that they cannot fend for themselves in the wild anymore or something like that. It sounds like you rather enjoy their company and prefer to keep them there with you to hang out instead. Does your landlord know that you have pet squirrels? I live in an apartment as well, but never though to have pet squirrels.

I was given a little baby squirel that had lost it's mother by some friends. My daughter and I bottle fed it and when it grew up, it would ride around in the pocket of her shirt or on her shoulder. He was really cute and would come when she called it. We had it about a year and then turned it over to a wildlife rehab group where it learned to live like a regular squirl. It is now in the wild bouncing from tree to tree eating acorns, ect.

I used to have a squirrel, when I was around 14 or 15. My mom's boyfriend was pressure washing his porch when a young squirrel came scrambling out from under soaked. He caught it and put it in a Pet Taxi for me. Mom and I went to visit that day, and he told me to check the carrier. I opened it and screamed as the little bugger came flying out at me. He circled my head, shoulders and made his way into my bra, curled up between my breasts and fell right to sleep. I named him Oliver. I had him until I was 19 and moved in with my dad and he didn't want him in the house, said 2 cats, 2 rats and 1 mouse was enough. I found a squirrel rehabilitator who took him and had him for a few days when he attacked her. The only thing she could figure was she was not mommy, I was. And because my dad didn't want him, she set him lose on a local mountain. I miss him alot.

We don't have any actual pet squirrels that come in the house; but we have a lot of squirrels that live in the yard and in the big trees we have in the front of the house. When we fill up the bird feeder, the squirrels are always looking for ways to get to the bird seed and eat it. We put a spinner on the hanger and when the squirrels try to walk out to where the bird feeder is, the spinner spins and dumps the squirrel on the ground. Other than eating the bird food, we love the squirrels, and enjoy watching them play in the trees, and running around on the lawn hunting for pine nuts. We put out some bread for them to eat, and they happily grab the bites of bread and run up the tree and eat it, and then come back down for more.

Squirrels would probably go extinct if they were in my country because of cats and the kids that would want to play with them, not to mention, adults that will probably want to eat them to save money while drinking beer. Gory assumptions aside, squirrels would need to be outside in their natural habitat. I've seen someone on YouTube who raised a baby squirrel that fell off the tree and it now has a family of it's own living in the backyard tree of the one who saved it. They would need their own special place where they can climb up. I'll probably set up a nest at the top of a shell or just some high place in the house.

At first, I thought you were wrong and that those were chipmunks rather than squirrels because I am used to tree squirrels, which look entirely different than that, whereas the ground squirrels look more like chipmunks than tree squirrels, the most prominent difference being that lack of a strip along the head. I'm in Maine, and we primarily have Eastern Gray Squirrels here.

My gray squirrels aren't pets exactly, but I do enjoy having them around. I began feeding the birds on a fire escape balcony on the second floor of our house. Of course, the squirrels soon came and I found that I enjoy them perhaps more than I did the birds. Rather than the losing battle that usually occurs when someone tries to keep the squirrels out of the bird food, I mix squirrel food in with bird food, and the squirrels eat the bulk of both, but I still get birds too. I don enjoy putting suet cakes in the metal cages that are supposed to keep the squirrels out, and watching the squirrels go to work at it. Sometimes it take them am few days but eventually one of them will figure out how to open it and make off with the whole cake.

I also enjoy putting nuts out for them in the fall and watching them bury them all over the yard. Unfortunately, that includes my garden bed, as they uproot plants to make room for nut storage. The Eastern Gray Squirrel doesn't have a storage system like the red squirrel does. They simply hid or bury them in every available spot and then go searching for it later, so I find nuts in the strangest places sometimes. In the winter, they even bury them in the snow.

They're so adorable! I've also watched other humans care for baby squirrels in some of the videos I've seen on YouTube. Do you take them to the vet? I cannot imagine what I would do with them if they get sick. I'll probably just have them indoors in fear of neighborhood cats getting to them.

Squirrels are closely related to rabbits and rats, since all of them are considered rodents, even though they each have very different diets.
One interesting thing that i have read is that if you have squirrels around, you will not have any rats or mice, because the squirrels either kill them or chase them off.

We have a lot of squirrels in this neighborhood, and though they are not pets, they are pretty friendly, and a lot of fun to watch.
My little dog, Tootsie (the terrier) likes to try and chase the squirrels, and the squirrel knows he is faster; so he just scampers up the tree a little ways, and then waves his tail and chatters at her, as she stands there and looks up at him.

We put out squirrel and bird food just outside of the back door, and it is fun watching all of the squirrels and birds eating the seeds and corn that we throw out for them.
They have gotten used to us now and don't mind when we are watching them.