Flying Squirrels
Posted: 01/26/2010 Filed under: Photography, Stories | Tags: attic, flying squirrels, live-trapping, sad stories 3 Comments »
Did you know that southern flying squirrels are nocturnal and highly social, nesting aggregately, with 10-20 squirrels sharing a nest in the wintertime, banding together for warmth?
Neither did we.
Until this weekend, that is, when we realized that the “chipmunks” our landlord’s handyman had been trying unsuccessfully to trap out of the attic for the last two months were actually FLYING SQUIRRELS. (How he mistook them for chipmunks for so long, we will never know. The huge black eyes! The furry “wing” skin on either side of their bodies, for gliding!)
Upon this revelation, we decided to take matters into our own hands, researching flying squirrel biology and using the knowledge to live-trap them out of the attic ourselves.
So far, we’ve taken seven squirrels to new homes in the woods faraway. The squeaking and scurrying we still hear from the attic tells us we’ve got a few more to go.
The whole story is long and has some extraordinarily sad parts which I won’t detail here…
But a happy part is how very cute these buddies are. So, so, so very cute, and sweet and unafraid! They come right up to you, curious and calm. And as you can see, they strike poses for the camera, too!
What absolutely fascinating and beautiful creatures – flying squirrels – I had no idea they were in the US. It would be so captivating to see them soaring between the trees. Since they are nocturnal, I guess you don’t see them flying from tree to tree on your walks, but I think that would be awesome. I went to the web site and looked around. Maybe you could make them their own aggregate box so they could hang out close to you but not in your attic. I see that they don’t venture very far into Kansas, but if they did, I would love to have them sent to me. Wouldn’t our little earth-bound squirrels be envious of their flying abilities? Bravo, for doing your best to capture them and relocate them back to their natural habitat. I’m sure they loved living with you, though, Thanks for looking out for them.
When the snow arrived, we put our live-trapping of the flying squirrels on hold — we couldn’t bring ourselves to turn them out into the cold! We still have a few in the attic, scampering around. When the weather warms, out they’ll go into the woods, too.
We are actually relieved that at least some are still up there, for this reason: the handyman — in a fit of desperation the week before Matt and I discovered the animals were not two chipmunks but many flying squirrels — had used rat poison in the attic. When Matt and I took over the squirrel-removal, we went up to remove the poison, but it had already been consumed (luckily, the handyman only put enough out for a few chipmunks, not 10-20 squirrels).
We spent a long weekend feeling wretched that we hadn’t taken over the trapping earlier in the process, so that the poison never would have been used. But the handyman was a “professional” hired by our landlord, and for two months we felt we couldn’t interfere with his process: if the squirrels were outsmarting him, they’d outsmart us too, right? Eventually we did interfere, and we tell ourselves: better late than never… And we’ve learned an important lesson about taking action when our guts tell us something is wrong and that we have the ability to make it right. But we are still sad.
[...] year, our landlord’s handyman misidentified the squirrels as “attic chipmunks” and tried unsuccessfully for two months to evict them. That is, until January, when he whipped [...]