May 2022 – a little room mate for a couple days…

May 2022 – Lodi and I don’t go out a lot. (We’re frugal people and happily stay in most of the time.) So, the fact that we went out on a TUESDAY (a work night of all things!), was practically unheard of. There was a very good (heartbreaking) reason we went out that night though… That day, 17 years before, Lodi had lost his best friend when they were in the army (in action) together. We always go to a local VFW post and toast to his friend’s honor. Because of this we didn’t get home until nearly 8:30 that night… If we had not gone out we never would have known about the little guy on our front porch, looking for help.

We had stopped at home after work to feed everyone so, sometime in the three hours we were gone, a little baby gray squirrel managed to get on to our front porch.

He was freezing to death, he had a bloody nose, a wound on his back and on his leg.

(May 2022 We looked everywhere for his nest and his mama to no avail. Most likely the whole nest was taken out by a predator of some kind… this is northern MN after all and the circle of life happens pretty regularly around here lol.)

He was shaking so bad but there he was, right on the edge of the top step, standing as tall as he could. I’ve never seen a cry for help so sad and so loud before though he could barely make a sound.

Lodi scooped him up and I ran to make him a nest of a heating pad and towels in a bowl.

Within minutes this was him totally passed out and you guys know where this going… I mean, seriously, HOW CUTE IS HE?!

The circumstances were just too star aligned… Any other day we would not have even known he was there and he would have NEVER made it through the night on our front step.

So, we had a little room mate for a couple of days!

He was a considerable amount of work (as babies are) and I am the least maternal human I know…

But he was such a fighter!

First, I figured out his age: With open eyes, full coat, perked up ears and all of his teeth this little guy was around 4-5 weeks old. With some research I picked up puppy formula from walmart and we fed him every few hours.

We made him a “nest” on a heating pad in a big dog crate I’ve held on to forever (though I’ve never used it) because they’re expensive… See my hoarding does pay off from time to time!

Poor little guy was so close to death’s door I just can’t imagine what he went through to get to our front step…

Someone mentioned maybe the neighbor’s cat was giving us an offering?

I was honestly surprised he made it through that first night. But he absolutely did and his little fighting spirit just took us: hook, line and sinker.

By day two he was already excitedly stumbling to me when it was feeding time.

May 2022 – Bittersweet

So it turns out that keeping a gray squirrel is totally illegal!

Though I really doubt if we had continued taking care of our little dude (and eventually releasing him) we would have been hauled away in hand cuffs or anything near so dramatic…

Regardless though we were in no way prepared to take the right kind of care of him and I started looking for a wildlife rehabilitation center ASAP.

I’m so glad we were able to save him!

Taking in any kind of wild life is pretty much always a bad idea IMO so I am in NO WAY advocating for it besides rescuing the animal and taking it directly to a qualified rehabilitation center.

It was a pretty neat experience to be able to cuddle a baby squirrel for a couple of days though!

He’s safe and sound in the right hands now.

WOW so when this post comes out on May 29th we are officially less than two weeks from our wedding day!

I am equally nervous and excited lol. We’ve been planning this a long time so I feel good about everything going as planned and am so glad we decided to have a “tiny” wedding with just our closest friends and family.

May 2022

(And, of course because we’ve planning it for so long, I am definitely ready to NOT be thinking about it every day once the big day is behind us lol.)

One thing we caught a little bit of flack on was hiring a professional photographer but I will never regret it even though it was the biggest cost in our budget.

A professional photographer is worth their weight in gold in my opinion. Ours took so much stress off of me, listened to our timeline and gave us a real schedule from start to finish. (She should totally consider becoming a wedding planner…)

After speaking with her a lot of my worry about the whole day was replaced with excitement.

May 2022 the weather finally broke and gave us some sunshine and heat meaning I finally planted the garden though it was nearly 3 weeks later than usual.

I haven’t managed to get many projects done over the past couple of months and I’m trying to have grace with myself about that…

..its not like we don’t have kind of an important event coming up that’s been seriously taking up all of my brain!

Lodi completed a half marathon in mid May and I am SO SO proud of him for sticking to his training for the past several months!

He finished 13 miles in only 2 hours!

One thing us bird lovers got out of such a late spring was being absolutely bombarded by all of our winter birds returning hungry and finding nothing to eat.

For me a Baltimore Oriel or a Scarlet Tanager was a rare sighting maybe once or twice a year. We’ve always had the luck to have Goldfinches and Ruby Throated Gross Beaks visit us from time to time but the sheer number of these GORGEOUS birds flocking in this May 2022 was just incredible.

Of course, I basically just sat by the window with my camera constantly lol!