Saturday Night Excitement!

Saturday evening Team Johnson went over to my parents house to grill out for dinner, along with my brother and sister-in-law. When we pulled into their driveway, they were outside staring up at a big tree in the yard. As we got out of the car we see my brother pulling something off the trunk of the tree. I guess some baby squirrels were climbing out of the nest and crying for their mama. So, where is the mama you ask? Well..... she got squished in the road a few days ago and the cold, hungry babies finally had enough and were trying to get out of the nest/tree. So my mom got 2 of them, but we could still hear one crying way up there. Erik and I took the 2 babies to the Animal Humane Society so that they could transport them to a local wild life refuge to be cared for. We then headed back for the BBQ and good conversation.

About an hour later, we could still hear the remaining baby so my Mom and I decided to do something about it. After convincing my Mom that she should not be the one to climb 30-40 feet up the tree, I began the long journey up. Part of the way up we discovered one more baby climbed out and was resting on a tree limb. I handed that to my mom and continued to climb. And climb, and climb, and climb. Until I got to the top. Did you know that a squirrel nest is basically a big ball of leaves and twigs? I thought it was more like a bird's nest, but nope. I was worried that if I began to poke around the nest, a baby might fall out. So down I climbed. We got a call from some wild life people who lived near (they got my number from the Humane Society after they picked up the babies we dropped off - they were girls) and they said they were willing to come out and see if they could get the remaining baby squirrel. We said yes, and were very surprised by this wonderful offer. When the arrived, I decided that they would not be the ones climbing up the tree. It is bad Karma to ask a middle aged man to climb up 30-40 feet for a baby squirrel. So back up the tree I went! And once I was back up by the nest, I started to peal it apart. Fortunately there were no other babies in the nest! We had rescued them all! The last one we got was apparently a boy, so they brought him back to his 2 sisters. The rescue people said the squirrels were about 3 weeks old, and that they wouldn't have lasted another day. So we feel really good about helping them! What an exciting BBQ it was!

3 week old baby squirrel all snuggled up in the box with towels.

Holly waiting outside with Grandma for the wild life rescue people. What a cute picture!