warning: this story is ridiculously cute.

draaaaa-ma.

anyone who lives in gainesville know how many squirrels there are everywhere.

so friday, we all met up at the studio to get some announcements, divvy up shelf space for classes and, of course, CLEAN.   while i’m sweeping up in the kiln room i decide to open up the bay door (on the left in the picture above) so i can sweep the leaves out.  (whoops)  i got a shower of grime and noticed a bunch of spanish moss jamming up the works.  later when someone else went to close it, 3 tiny bald squirrels fell out!  their little  squeaks made it pretty clear that they were not down with the situation.

everyone sprang into action.  ray put in a call to animal control and mama squirrel came barreling over.  she grabs one of the babies in her mouth and starts (we thought) gnawing on it.  somebody (it was all a blur!) quickly shuts the solid door to protect the rest of the babies. for good measure jon scoots the little guys onto a piece of cardboard so that they wouldn’t get cold so quickly.

i guess i figured the babies didn’t stand much of a chance anyway and if mama squirrels are supposed to eat there babies then who are we to mess with nature?  but i also had the image of the the squirrel that lives in my roof (another squirrel story) in my head so i just didn’t think she was munching on her baby.  so i went outside to scope the situation and she she seemed to be bundling the baby up so she could hold it by it’s arms and legs.  once she had it secure she ran up a big tree and put it in a nest we could see from below.

while she was running that little errand we opened the door again and moved the squirrels outside.

on her second run up the tree this giant FALCON swoops out of the sky and tries to grab her.  i kid you not!  mama strikes out against the falcon and the baby falls from the tree into the soft pine needles below and starts squawking.  the mom runs back to the other baby and brings that one up the tree.  at one point we were literally running after the falcon to discourage it from attacking the squirrels (don’t worry, no falcons were harmed).

finally mama came down and found baby number three and brought it up to the tree tops as well.

BA-NANAS!

needless to say i didn’t have my phone on me so was unable to document all this action but that just makes it more fun to tell.  and everyone was so cute, acting on behalf of the little squirrels:)