If we were to scour the world on each passing day, we’d likely find multiple people in the process of opening their hearts and homes to an animal who escaped a rough situation.
But while it comes as a great relief to those animals and the shelter workers who care for them when people volunteer to take on this responsibility, some folks will find that they can become a little critter’s hero whether they expected to or not.
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Whether we’re talking about a garbage collector who was horrified to discover thrown-away puppies on their route or a police officer who happened upon a sick dog in the middle of the road, we never truly know when an animal will come into our lives just as they don’t know when life will change theirs.
And that’s certainly proved to be the case for one woman who would likely have never guessed she’d one day have a squirrel as a pet.
While Patty Robinson of Boston was looking outside her kitchen window one day, she saw a squirrel in her yard.
As she told Bored Panda, she went out to have a look at him and could tell by the fact that his eyes were always closed that he was still a baby.
This led her to try and find a nest so she could locate his family but after 45 minutes of searching her property, she found no sign of any other squirrel.
In Robinson’s words, “My job was helping people, I’m a foster parent. I raised a grackle blackbird and freed him. At the end that grackle which I called Hey Baby really saved me!”
As such, she decided to rescue this squirrel and found that he instantly relaxed in her hand. Since she described him as “bunking in” once she put him in her pocket, she decided to call him Bunk.
Once she cared for Bunk enough that she felt confident letting him go, she released him into the wild.
However, it seems the squirrel had other ideas.
As Robinson put it, “I did free Bunk – he was gone for five days! He returned scared, growling. I tried three more times and he refused to leave!”
And this was something of a problem for her because it turns out there’s a reason most people don’t keep squirrels as pets. Namely, because they’re expensive to take care of, prone to biting, messy, and need more of their own space than you’d expect.
Still, she didn’t give up and decided to turn her house into a jungle-like playground for him with a treehouse, a tree sculpture, and some ramps and tubes to help him access them with an injured paw.
And if anything, it seems she’s done too good a job of accommodating him because Bunk’s always on the lookout when she steps into his room.
As she said, “If I walk around his room, he follows me, watches me so I’m not making any changes.”
But while living with him has certainly been an adjustment, Robinson says they’ve become very close over time and that Bunk is very loving and cuddly.
In her words, “Not a word is spoken between us yet we understand each other. Humans and squirrels a much more connected than people think!”
h/t: Bored Panda
