A world diminished by loss

In the many photos and videos on social media that form the touchstones of this small squirrel’s life, sunlight infuses his coat with a glow, his eyes twinkle with mischief and the love of his caretaker - his human brother - is evident.

At first, a palm squirrel’s imprint on this earth does not seem to amount to much. Perhaps on average, each adult of this species weighs a bit more than 100 grams - or close to a quarter pound. In the U.S., we are denied the privilege of personally knowing these tiny treasures of southeast Asia. But in the moving images on popular social media sites, we see readily how much weight they really have as citizens of their part of the planet. For those who ascribe to Hindu legend, palm squirrels are sacred squirrels, their stripes visible proof that they were loved and protected by Lord Rama. Rama, legend says, saved them from certain death, comforting and stroking them with his fingers after successfully wresting them from enemy assault. The stripes that appear on their backs are - according to that same legend - a reminder of Rama's powerful gestures of comfort.

The more secular, contemporary legend of one Sri Lankan squirrel named Sweepy has its sacred moments too. Those of us who care deeply about these tiny members of the Order Rodentia can grow to know palm squirrels, even from afar, through online friendships with their human families. There is so much to gain from their videos and photos. Those images preserve their fleeting three-dimensional lives forever in the two-dimensional realm of sound and image. Once again we see that glow of sunlight, that twinkle and all the love.

Sweepy's physical body has just completed its adventure on earth. He departed, having been given the gift of more than 6 years on the planet, a milestone unseen by the majority of other palm squirrels.

This noble citizen of Sri Lanka, rescued as a baby, lived to be doted on. He was joined in his squirrel games by a human brother who did not draw the line between “man” and “squirrel,” but simply united the two as brethren. With this family, Sweepy found security and love. With this family, he was comforted and stroked when he was sick or hurting – and countless times he returned the favor. None of us can ask for more in life than that, even if that life comprises only six trips of our planet around the sun.

Now as Earth turns on its axis, it moves with 100 or so grams missing from its cargo of passengers. This sweet creature known as Sweepy has taken his energy elsewhere.

But if you sit quietly - very quietly - you can still feel that pulse. It beats within a realm that we cannot capture in any photos or videos. Sunlight now infuses his very being with its eternal glow. And if you close your eyes and look within, you’ll know the universe itself is twinkling now.

The end

And so, it is done.

Euthanasia does not empower us to act as God but exhorts us to listen, simply as equals here on Earth, and to do the other's bidding with compassion and heart.

We take up this task, but it is not easy. And perhaps it is not so much a task but a trust.

Ultimately, it is not even a choice.

The wildlife rehabilitator's role is to facilitate healing. So often we fall short. We are, in the end, creatures helping fellow creatures - and nothing more. Nature is bigger and grander. Nature is more dispassionate.

The animals in our care do not judge us. We are no more, and are no less, in their eyes, regardless of outcome. What matters is that we tried. They know that. Because our struggle is theirs.

And so, it is done. Not by salve or potion or healing touch, but it is done. His burden is lifted now.

I do not subscribe to the vision of Rainbow Bridge, but I do believe in the spirit. And in those moments as it left behind the body neither of us could restore, his spirit surely grew lighter.

Release

Ultimately, this is what it comes to: a reaching for the edge of the known universe, like Christopher Columbus dawning upon the new world.

But the world that greets this newly released squirrel is an old one. To him it is an ancient, familiar turf. The brown of his eyes, savoring their encounter with the wooded landscape, is the same hue as the forest floor. The woods, this squirrel -- the two are inextricable from one another's genes. He feels it: This was his world long before his eyelids even parted to welcome the sunlight, the same light that streams across his face now as he contemplates the changing edge of his known world.

In the parlance of wildlife rehabilitation, this is the process called "release." But that suggests an imprisonment, a holding against one's will. Though hand-rearing and captivity is the consequence of nature interrupted, not the natural order of things, the intervention provides a lifesaving grace, a second chance, a way back into the life that is written into their bones.

And so he reaches - first, for that formative touch of soil, then the fallen leaves and ultimately the trees. He steps forward. He steps back.

He leaps.

And then he turns his brown eyes away forever. He does not look back. He has sailed over the horizon, landing sure-footed on that distant continent.

Requiem

Sometimes on a bad morning, before I have a chance to remember, I still look for him. There in the rush of gray that greets me with its collective demand for pecans and walnuts, I wait for the eager, open face and the familiar drag of the crimped right front paw.

Ghastly as it was at first, the injury never seemed to hold the same significance for him as it did for me. In fact, few things stopped this squirrel in the year we shared beginning last spring, when he first showed up outside my sliding glass door. As-yet uninjured and enduringly photogenic, he captured me with his robust personality and the steadiness of his routine. Barely a month into our friendship, an encounter with a mystery predator left his right front paw permanently mangled and, for a time, infected and horrifically swollen. He kept his morning appointments and would sometimes add an afternoon encore. But he made it clear he wanted only my food, not my sympathy and most certainly not my help.

Then barely a week later, a new assault, one that left his richly bushed tail reduced to a half-torn flag waving in not-quite-surrender. The encounter had left the tail's disconnected remnant beneath a nestbox he'd called home for a short while in one of our maples. I scooped up the shard, placing it for safekeeping in a plastic bag, and sealed it.

I must have believed at the time this was how I could keep this independent spirit close forever.

And nothing slowed or stopped him. Not the blasting heat of that summer, not the subsequent superstorm of autumn, and not the battering of winter blizzards that escorted the arrival of 2013. As spring marked our full year of feedings and greetings, his wildness was softened slightly by his boldness: He would hang on the screen door, tap on the glass for me, or simply sit and stare in each morning – and wait. If he did not look for me, I would look for him. Somehow, we would find one another.

But for this tough survivor, it was always at a distance he perceived as safe.

The head wound, when it appeared in late spring, was deceptive. The hair loss accompanying it mirrored the onset of mange, not uncommon among squirrels but not necessarily worrisome. He was, after all, not the only male squirrel sporting such patches, the hallmark of inter-squirrel squirmishes sparked by hormones in spring mating season.

It did not take long for infection to rim his eyes with pus and collect in pockets that altered the sculpture of his head. On a Sunday morning, I presented him with an option and he took it: He stepped into the carrying cage - and into my foolish hope of being able to save him.

The freedom he lost that day was only designed to be short-term. By nightfall, mortality had rewritten that plan. After burying him a day later beneath our tallest evergreen, I locked the sliding glass door and turned my back on that insistent, inexorable parade of gray.

But they have proven to be the unstoppable ones, just as he had always been. Undaunted by a population diminished by one, committed to their own troublesome survival, they will not give up on the hope that their collective demands for food will always be filled. And so in their wisdom and their need to go forward into their lives, they have shown far more grace than I ever could.

It humbles me. I thank them for their patience and for the lesson.

I unlock the door and turn to face them again.

When it ends up in the toilet

It seems that TSS - Toilet Squirrel Syndrome - has reared its watery head once more. If one is to believe the news reports, finding a squirrel in one's toilet is quickly becoming as commonplace as discovering a drippy faucet.

The latest toilet squirrel arrives by way of Canada, where a woman in Winnipeg, alerted by her dogs to a commotion in the commode, lifted the lid to find a drenched creature engaged in an unsuccessful struggle to climb out. Quick-thinking and compassionate, she fished the squirrel out with barbecue tongs, gently and mercifully rinsed him off in her bathtub with a small scoop of water, then set him free.

It is unclear how (or even why) the squirrel ended up a prisoner of the plumbing. Clearly he hadn't been looking for walnuts. This - like all the other toilet squirrels before - remains one of life's mysteries. The woman's concern and presence of mind saved a life (and her careful rinse job hopefully rescued some of the squirrel's dignity as well).

The story was widely covered by various news media, including MSN.com, the Vancouver Sun and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. However, a later news account of this on the CBC website could not leave well enough alone. After relating a somewhat responsible account of the odd sequence of events leading to this highly unusual rescue, CBC chose to create a poll, asking its online readership a most critical, life-altering question: "What would you do if you found a squirrel in your toilet?"

The CBC staff then offered a choice among four pre-selected answers: 1. Get out the BBQ tongs, 2. Rescue it and enjoy my new pet, 3. Free it, 4. Flush!

Clearly Canada's oldest and most respected national broadcast network needs desperately to believe it can be cute, even if it means taking cheap shots at a small, frightened creature.

Fortunately, the little squirrel who'd encountered the kind Winnipeg homeowner managed to be rescued from the depths of the toilet.

The same cannot be said for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.