Cute Squirrels Get a Second Chance At Life in This Rehab Center | National Geographic

A lot of times people ask the question, "Well, why are you rehabbing a squirrel? It's a road, and there's tons of them. What's one less?"

Well, squirrels play an important part in the whole ecosystem. They are prey animals, so they help feed a lot of the other animals that are here, and they help with the propagation of different types of plants because they bury seeds and nuts. It's an important life. It's not a decision that I like to make to euthanize an animal just because they are a squirrel or a rabbit. They have every right, just like people have every right, to live here and to be a part of nature.

Some of the many ways that squirrels end up here are due to... they're either found on the ground, they're found by pets, people cut down trees, and so the nest falls down on the ground. So they come into us, and we assess them here. If they're really small, we will feed them formula with a syringe, and we care for them by toileting them because they're unable to toilet themselves.

Then we move them through the phases in different-sized cages and offer them different foods. In the end, we put them outside where they learn to be a squirrel outside. When we come in and feed here, we don't talk to any of them because we're trying to get them back habituated into the wild. Apples for the squirrels! After about a week outside, we go ahead and release them back into the wild.

Right now, we have a little over 110 squirrels here on the property. All the squirrels that we have here are called fox squirrels. We do have, I think, one melanistic squirrel, meaning that it is a fox squirrel but it's all black, and that is just a genetic thing that happens one in every 100 births.

We name squirrels here because it's easier for us to identify them. That's Noodle! Hi, Noodle! To go by a number, like 1, 2, 3, really doesn't tell me much about the animal. But if the animal is named George, I know who George is, and especially if he has any issues. All someone has to do is mention, "Hey, George is doing much better today," or "George is not doing better today." It's much easier for all of us to really know the animals in the facility.

Antibiotics, pain meds for a week, and then we'll put her down. Recheck one week? Okay, sounds good.

These guys require a lot of time, a lot of skill. They require hours and hours of work, and so it's a true dedication. Sometimes for me, I feel like I'm running out of energy, but all I got to do is take a look at one of these cuties, and I'm ready to go again. [Music]