I made a big mistake in the summer time. A baby squirrel came to my window and I felt so bad for it. It was such a little thing. Well, winter time came and I had to stop feeding her, she grew so big. Now her food source has stopped and she got crazy and started chewing my screens. I finally chased her, but she still keeps coming back chewing on my screen. Please help.
Thanks.
By abalas from Plainview, Long Island
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Kindness s never a mistake. She is your baby and having a hard time finding something to eat. She is starving and associates your kindness with food to survive. Please don't kill her with ammonia.
She will acclimate slowly to the wild but for now she needs food you have to offer in order to survive. She doesn't have the ability to find it on her own.
As kids, we raised baby squirrels. They slept with us and got off the bed to pee on paper. Ate with us, enjoyed outdoors, and scratched at the door to come in.
This totally changed when mating season came. We could never touch them again. They would come close. It was like "Hi, good to see ya". We so loved them. It was gratifying to know they were safe and happy.
Please don't torture your baby by not feeding. She is starving. Help her for a little while until she acclimates. To throw her outside with nothing is cruel. You showed her love before. Don't kill her by taking everything away.
Why don't you put a feeder close to the window and feed her. She will still have a full belly and you can still watch her!
I agree about setting up a squirrel feeder where you can enjoy watching them. We had squirrels raiding our bird feeders. I hung an accesible Ice cream bucket (we get 4 qts of ice cream in nice buckets) in the other tree.
Put food out for the squirrel on the ground outside the window. As the previous post said, don't hurt this little animal or starve it. God will know what you do about this and remember.
It's never a mistake to try to help and especially to help a helpless creature! Being that the baby considers you her mom and friend then at least feed her a little something a day until she's ready to take care of herself completely. She might not ever be completely self suffcient now but truly how is giving him/her at least a few nibbles of food a day to help him/her a bad thing?
I've fed the squirrels that live in the courtyard of my apartment complex for almost four years now. They never needed much but the beginning of this past Winter the bad weather came very early and very furious and the squirrels were caught off guard as far as winter preparedness. What I do is to throw them nuts and apple slices from over my first floor patio railing. One time I dropped some of the food on the patio and noticied one of the squirrels climb over to retrieve it a few hours later. I make sure now that all of the food is thrown a couple of feet over the railing and none dropped on my patio area.
Now that it's almost Spring they are not even touching all of the food that very day and they are only taking what they need which isn't much. One apple keeps them (there are four squirrels) happy for two or three days along with a couple of handfuls a day of bulk already shelled unsalted (salt is a big no no for squrrels) nuts a day.
It doesn't cost that much to feed them and since you're talking about only one squirrel instead of four it will be even less for you. I buy the shelled peanuts in bulk for only about $1.50 a pound and apples in bulk for $1.00 a pound. To feed all four squirrels has been about $15.00 a month for me.
Peanuts are not really good for squirrels. Bird seed would be better. Never pet food. Squirrels are vegeterians. You can buy corn in a big bag at a feed store for next to nothing. Please do not let her starve. When spring comes she will learn to find her own food.
I'm not sure why you stopped feeding her in the winter, as this would be the time when food is needed most. When you decided to take pity on her and feed her as a baby, why would you not want her to survive now that she's growing up? The reason she's damaging your screens is that she's likely very hungry or starving.
I am sorry but I need to correct Lilac :-( Nuts of any kind, including peanuts, are quite healthy for squirrels as long as they are unsalted. Squirrels naturally eat an assortment of nuts, seeds, fruit and some veggies in the wild and they sometimes will also eat such items as bird eggs and insects.
Aww, please feed her! She must be starving! If she is chewing through your screens. When you started to feed her, you became her food source and you just can't stop, she depends on you. Please go to the store and buy her some food that is good for her, you can go to a feed store and they can advise you. Please do not let her starve to death, that would be very cruel
If you feed the squirrel and it still chews your screens, you may have to catch it with a small (live) animal trap and release it several miles away.
Wanting food is not the only reason squirrels chew on screens. I have been feeding squirrels for 4 years. They come every day at the same time to get fed. Unfortunately this year they have decided to chew on my screen. These are not hungry squirrels.
I moved into my new place at the end of the winter. I noticed that there was a squirrel hanging around on the back patio where the trash was kept. I left home the other day and when I returned I found that I had an uninvited guess. A squirrel chewed through the kitchen window screen and helped himself to some bread and rolls left closed on the counter. I shut that window but left another window open and to my surprise my husband came out of the bathroom this morning to find that our uninvited guess had invited himself yet again. It's obvious that he's determined to show up for a meal at his leisure but I am not happy with that at all. I moved from an area where I had to keep my windows shut all the time especially if I was not at home. I now live in a safer area and on the second floor and would love to be able to have my windows open without doing guard duty. What can I do to stop this visitor from showing up unannounced, uninvited and definitely unwanted.
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