Rock Squirrel

By guest writer Hodari Nundu




It
all began when my sister (back then we were both in junior high) found three
baby rock squirrels (Spermophilus variegatus), with their eyes still closed,
and lying seemingly "abandoned" in the school's grounds (which were
near an uninhabited ravine and so were crawling with animals of all sorts,
including armadillos, skunks, frogs, caecilians, small snakes, a huge diversity
of moths and very large beetles).




If
I had been there when she found them, I would have told her that mother rock
squirrels often move their babies from one burrow to another and that it was
probably going to return for them, but I wasn’t, so the squirrels ended up in
our house, where my sister and my father tried to bottle fed them (they had successfully
bottle fed a newborn kitten at about the same time so I guess they were feeling
confident) but unfortunately two of the squirrels died, and only one survived,
a female.




And
so the horror began.




Rock
squirrels are very aggressive. Colomos Park in Guadalajara is home to both
Mexican gray squirrels, which live in trees, and rock squirrels, and when
people feed peanuts to the squirrels, the rock squirrels are always dominant
and chase the gray squirrels away, hogging all the attention (and the peanuts)
and biting fingers in the process. In this same park I have seen fierce battles
between the rock squirrels themselves and many of them are covered with scars,
or have missing ears or chewed up tails from past battles. Anyway, the squirrel
at home started out playful—chasing and fighting the cats and just being
hyperactive as one would expect a squirrel to be—but then it started charging
at everyone in the house, tail all puffed up and making a sound like a rattle
which was its battle cry.




It
got to the point where the lady who helped us with the chores would climb up
chairs in fear whenever she saw the squirrel (or "el ardillo" as she
called it), and there wasn’t one person in the house who didn’t get bitten in
the toes or ankles by the squirrel. It became so bad-tempered that it had to be
kept in a wire cage, where I (a kid after all) would torment it by blowing air
in its face, which it hated, but it seemed fair to me because it had bitten me
many times already.




Eventually
the squirrel was moved to a larger cage built for it in the yard, but it then
started gnawing at the wires trying to escape, until its mouth and teeth were
all bloody and the decision was made to release it into the wild.




We
took it to the grounds of a seminary, where we had seen plenty of rock
squirrels as well as other animals such as skunks. We knew that the squirrel
would probably have a shorter life now, but thought that at least it would get
to live like it was intended to instead of going crazy(er) in a cage. As soon
as the animal carrier was opened the squirrel leaped into the grass and disappeared.
We never knew what became of it. If rock squirrels are anything like rats or
other rodents I suppose the local squirrels may have killed the intruder but
then again, it was a vicious little beast so, who knows?



Photo courtesy of Hodari Nundu