Because they were all put here just like us, and they have their little lives, too.

So a few days ago, I’d just finished a job, I was walking back to the van in the cold and the rain, and for some strange and inexplicable reason, I happened to glance down towards my feet. I saw this little guy on the ground.
 
I bent down to take a closer look - and he moved. He was still alive.  A quick search on ‘that’ engine quickly identified him as a baby rat. I immediately named him ‘Bilbo’. I’m childish like that. In the UK, rats have a bad press. Mention the ‘r’ word to the average street citizen, and the chances are that the responses will revolve exclusively around Black Death, bubonic plague, Weil’s disease, sewers, neck attacks, filth, and so on. But that’s unfair and 95% untrue. They’re hugely intelligent, sociable, and most all of the diseases they’re blamed for are actually the fault of other organisms which employ rats as their convenient hosts. It felt important to me that I should save him from a cold, lonely, wet death. I gathered him up and drove straight to the closest veterinarian, who recommended artificial puppy milk via a syringe, plus warmth and comfort. I bought a little rodent carrier cage, plus straw bedding, a water bottle, and other stuff.

Within a few hours, the difference was  incredible.

I’d read, however, that the first 24 hours after rescuing a baby were critical. These little guys have absolutely no ability to regulate their own body temperature once they’re out of the nest and away from Mom’s warmth - so they’ll either freeze or fry if the ambient temperature is just a few degrees off.

Despite my best efforts - Bilbo didn’t make it. Despite me sitting up all through the night to feed him every hour and trying to keep the room temperature at the correct level, he just suddenly went limp and died at 5am yesterday morning. I took him out into the forest behind my house, and laid him to rest on a little bed of leaves, surrounded by flower petals from my garden.

Nature will now take its course - he’ll either decay and return to the soil, or he’ll be collected to provide nourishment for a passing owl - maybe to feed her own babies.

Goodbye little fella. It was a privelege to have known you.

@Yardbird Thanks for that. The true measure of a civilised society isn’t about how we treat our equals - it’s about how we treat our so-called ‘lesser’ others - including baby rats and injured cats.

Around ten years ago, I was on holiday in Paris. I found this little, tiny gal in an alley doorway - cold, wet and so, so scared. A van is such a useful tool when you have a sudden need to smuggle a puppy through the 22-mile UK-France tunnel to avoid dystopian quarantine rules . I’ll just leave this picture here. We even taught her English;



PS - I really hope you called your cat ‘Thufferin Thuckertash’. I’d like that a lot. Greetings from the unusually warm UK. It’s sunny and no-one’s ever seen this big orange circle in the sky before. We’re all scared.

@woodbutcherbower : when I was a student I did some volunteering in a local farm. One day, while cleaning out the hay loft, we found an abandoned rats nest. These were brown rats. I brought home 2 with me. They were not as young as your tiny one, but still quite young. They have lived for almost 6 years. If you realise that the well-known white-belly rats you see in pet shops seldom live beyond 2 years (because they have been bred to get tumours easily), then you start to think about what we people do to animals.

Great try on saving that little one! Thanks for taking the effort!

Our last 4 dogs have been rescues, three of them older dogs that no one wanted. It is amazing how much love there is in those thankful animals. They deserve a chance to a good life.

Here is our latest one, a huge and very sweet mountain dog of the Maremmas (Italian) we adopted from Sardinia:

And I've helped 3-4 birds come back to life that have tried to short-cut through the house.. Windows unfortunately closed.

Thanks so much to everyone for all the kind words and sentiments. Here’s my one and only bird rescue - he flew into the window glass of my workshop and knocked himself out. I thought he was a goner - but after a few minutes of recovery in my hand, he just flew away. It was great to see.

@Yardbird Thanks for that. The true measure of a civilised society isn’t about how we treat our equals - it’s about how we treat our so-called ‘lesser’ others - including baby rats and injured cats.

Around ten years ago, I was on holiday in Paris. I found this little, tiny gal in an alley doorway - cold, wet and so, so scared. A van is such a useful tool when you have a sudden need to smuggle a puppy through the 22-mile UK-France tunnel to avoid dystopian quarantine rules . I’ll just leave this picture here. We even taught her English;

(Attachment Link)

PS - I really hope you called your cat ‘Thufferin Thuckertash’. I’d like that a lot. Greetings from the unusually warm UK. It’s sunny and no-one’s ever seen this big orange circle in the sky before. We’re all scared.

Truely adorable!!!

The other day I opened my garage door to start woodworking and heard a buzzing behind me.  A hummingbird came in my garage, got turned around about half way in, and instinctively was trying to go up to get out.  He kept bumping up against the ceiling.  He had plenty of latitude to go out horizontally but he was too panicked to figure that out.  I tried to hold up a black broom (contrasted against the white walls/ceiling) to try to encourage him to go in an opposite direction, but it didn’t work. 

After a while I realized I just needed to give him a chance to wear himself out and hopefully get lower to fly out. After about 15 minutes of incredibly athletic/panicked flying he rested on my garage door brace, but too high for me to try to help in a positive way. He started flying again for another 10 min and got worn out on the edge of a jig close to the floor.  He was so exhausted that he let me get close. When I tried to edge him into an upside down bucket (since he liked to go vertical), he had a final burst of energy when I touched him and flew low out the garage door and away from sight. I have chosen to believe that he survived.  I’m a birder and have never seen a hummingbird change to a darker color like that from exhaustion. I’m so glad at least he got out.

I’ve been a FOG lurker for several years and have learned so much from other’s postings.  Thanks for all who contribute to this forum.

Timely thread,
Night before last, a little bat got into our house somehow. After the fact, I learned we did just the right thing for getting it out. Which was;
Confine it to a single room if possible.
Open a window
Turn out the light and leave the room.

The poor thing was kind of panicked, flying in circles around the room, shifting his path whenever we moved. A couple of times when he stopped and landed on something you could see his chest heaving.
It was clear that trying to catch it directly wasn't going to work, Not knowing what else to try I got the windows in front of my desk opened up and took down two monitors that blocked the window. Then we turned out the light and left. The cat, which had been trying to chase it when it first got in, was standing by outside the room to try and "help".
We checked the room 10 minutes or so after, and the bat had left.

Bats, along with lots of other critters are unfairly maligned, but they eat a lot of bugs, and are generally beneficial so I understand. There is some rabies risk in touching them, so caution is warranted, but there are hazards in interacting too closely with lots of wildlife.

Bon Appetite mr/ms bat!

When I was 10 years old, (I'm 44 now) we had a bat inside our living room.
I had a friend over to play, and he said he knew what to do, took a dish-towel and started to swing it above his head. This probably messed up its sonar so it dropped to the floor. He then picked it up carefully with the towel and took it outside.

Time for another story:

Company for Dinner

“Is your dog in the house?”  It was my neighbor who had just knocked at our door.  My family of wife, two small children, our dog and I had just taken our places around the dinner table.  Of course, the dog was seated on the floor close to one of the children’s chairs where she felt it most advantageous to catch small scraps of food as they dropped to the floor beneath.

Four years before, Brigitte and I had tied the wedding knot. Shortly there after, I started a vegetable garden.  As long as I could remember, I had worked in the family garden as  a “responsibility” chore.  Once I had my own little piece of property and a wife, I continued my enjoyment that was no longer a chore.  When the children and a dog appeared, it became a whole lot more fun. 

The only problem was RACCOONS.  They were upsetting only to a  point.  While living on my uncle’s farm, we always had a garden.  I loved helping to take care of those veggies of all descriptions.  I loved, even more, the partaking of the harvest.  The raccoons liked just about all the items I enjoyed, especially the corn.  Those pesky little devils always knew, before us humans, exactly when the corn was ready to be eaten.  We never trapped or tried to poison the animals.  My cousin was a hunter, so we did, sometimes, end up with meat supplied by the raccoon family, but we never killed them unless we needed meat on the table. We did find ways to outwit the animals.  We put leftover table scraps on the ground close to the crop of the day (for the raccoons).  In that way, we were serving up a distraction,  so hopefully, no sweetcorn would be eaten.  With my own garden, I discovered watermellon rind to be a delicacy and very nourishing for those pests with the ringed tails.

Once the garden had played itself out, the raccoons would go to our garbage containers.  At that time, I would bring home metal containers and put heavy rocks or concrete blocks on top of the lids for discouragement.  I much preferred to “try” to outsmart the greedy little monsters.

I replied to my neighbor, “Yeah, she is right here under the table awaiting goodies to drop to the floor.  Why do you ask?”

“Good.  Keep her in the house because I am putting poison in my yard to get rid of the raccoons.”  He left immediately.

My wife and I looked at each other, our mouths open, but speechless.  Our children started to cry. I immediately, once I got my mouth to close, removed myself from the table, went outside and removed the tops from our garbage cans.  I explained to the kids that raccoons like to tip over garbage cans to get into all the goodies that we throw out from our meals. “They will eat from our table the same as Buzzy (our dog at the time).”

The kids were happy.  My wife was happy.  I hope our neighbor was happy. I am certain the ‘coons were happy.  They strewed garbage all over the area around those containers.

In a very short  time, veggies in the garden started to attract the raccoons.  At that time, we would put out a tray of goodies every evening right after we finished our own meal.  That was even better fare for our animals.  They cleaned that tray and left our garden alone.  Wellll, mostly alone. 

About a month later, my wife’s niece and nephew came to visit for three weeks from her native Germany.  On the way home from Kennedy Airport, we got the two children all excited with our stories of feeding, not only a raccoon family, but a family of skunks, a couple of opossums and even a porcupine.  We rolled into our yard in time for Brigitte to fix up some goodies for dinner while I lit the outside grill to fix up some “dog’s and burgers”. 

After finishing our meal, we set out the usually expected tray of food for our wild friends.  Brigitte’s niece and nephew, as our own children, were very disappointed. None of our new “pets” showed up.  In fact, not one showed up for the entire three weeks of their stay.  We looked for them every evening, but no luck.  Not even the porcupine or skunks, which had obvious means of defense at their disposal, showed up.  The evening we took the relatives back to Kennedy and waved “good bye”, the animals reappeared.

Tinker

woodbutcherbower--that is a beautiful bird!

Your dog looks like our dog. We adopted Evie in January from a local dog rescue    www.FOHA.org .

Evie had been used as a breeding dog in NC. She ended up in a shelter in NC and was scheduled for euthanasia last Fall. The good people at FOHA brought her to their facility here in Loudoun County VA. She had been terribly mistreated, but after plenty of care at the Vet and plenty of love and affection here at our house, she seems to be on the mend.