No Animal Too Small

Everyday, I go for a morning walk. I always cross over this one particular bridge. Actually, I cross over this bridge a lot, independent of my walk. This bridge is the connection from my neighborhood over to Ventura Blvd.

The story, however, starts on my morning walk. Monday Oct 5th, to be exact.

Just to give you a little peak into my brain… I enjoy walking over this bridge. It crosses the LA “River”. This particular section has a lot of birds; ducks, egrets, small birds (the type unidentifiable to me), and the occasional hawk. I think it is because this section has a patch of “land” (the cement on one side is exposed). I sometimes stop to look at the birds. I always look down to see what’s around. It makes me happy.

This particular Monday morning, I looked down and I spotted something that wasn’t supposed to be there. A squirrel.

After walking over the bridge a few times that day, doing normal errands, and noticing he was still there… I realized he was trapped. I watched him to try get out by climbing the wall, to no avail.

Hesitantly, I called animal services. For one, because I am sensitive to that fact that our public services are crunched due to budget constraints and secondly, because it seemed a bit ridiculous to call over a squirrel. An animal, I was reminded, was no different than a rat… just a bushier tail.

Everyone I talked to at animal services was amazing and assured me that it was good that I had called. Monday was a “closed because of budget issues day”, except for large animals. The officer asked me to “see if he is still there in the morning and if so, call us back. We’ll go get him.”

Lo and behold, he was there. I called.

After an exchange of calls, I was informed that this happens all the time and an officer will go out to inspect. If they felt that the squirrel could safely get out, they would leave it be, otherwise, they would send out SmART… the Small Animal Rescue Team.

I never heard back from Animal Services. Fretted for a while. But then I decided, the officers knew their job and could assess the situation and determine what needed to be done.

Then on Thursday, I was on my walk again. I looked over the bridge. And, yep…. there he was. Again, I didn’t want to think about it, because I knew the officers knew what was best for how to handle it. But, that afternoon I got a call.

A different officer was calling to see if I had noticed if the squirrel were still there, to which I said “yes”. He informed me that he was with the SmART and that they would go by the next morning and get him out.

So, now we are at Friday. The squirrel is still trapped in the river. I am on my morning walk and as I approach the bridge, I see the team is setting up the “rescue”.

After introducing myself, I learn that they are going to repel into the river from the bridge, trap the squirrel, determine if he is healthy to be released and if not rehabilitate and treat before releasing.

I also learned the most important thing: they do all of this on their own dime. They pay for all of their equipment, supplies and training out of their pocket. Because of the river and the ocean, they have all taken swift water rescue training, which came in handy when they had to rescue a deer from the ocean! Can you imagine!

These are a great group of men and women who kept assuring me that THERE IS NO ANIMAL TOO SMALL.

The whole thing gathered a crowd. I have to say, I was so disappointed in talking to the people that came by. Each and every one of them lived in our neighborhood and had seen him since Monday. Not one person called. One woman threw him granola. But that was it. It left me sad. It’s funny to think about how ridiculous I felt having called animal services, but in my book it was the only option. I couldn’t walk by everyday looking at him, doing nothing, and essentially waiting for him to die. Maybe it is an overreaction, but it seems if you chose to do nothing and let him die, that is animal cruelty. Even if it is just a squirrel.

Unfortunately, on this Friday, the squirrel got away.

They don’t know how he got down, but he indeed did not have a way out. All of the storm drains were clogged. However, one was clogged in such place that he could hide up there, out of reach of the rescuers. After a while, they had to give up.

I had left before all of this had happened. In fact, I was going to call on Monday to find out how the story ended. But, I didn’t need to… I walked by the bridge on my way to the Farmer’s Market on Sunday… almost a week later… and the team was there, getting ready to repel and save him again.

I really wish I had thought of taking pictures sooner…. using a rope, they sent down what looked like a trap to block the storm drain that he hid in the last time. We could all see him in another storm drain, poking his head out looking at us. They went into the river and blocked that storm drain he was in with a net. Through the net, they poked at him with a rod of sorts and that got him to run out, into the net, and they GOT HIM!

He was healthy! According to the law he had to be released within a mile of where he was rescued because of territory and displacement of other squirrels. (I will admit, I offered my yard.)

One reason I am sharing this with you is because it was a week long experience that made an impact on me. Most notably because of the three volunteers who go out and rescue these animals, of all sizes: cats, dogs, deer, raccoons, and even squirrels… paying for all of their equipment and training by themselves. This group needs to continue.

I would like to ask of all you to help me in sending a donation to this group. For one thing, they have a hard time getting donations.. when someone makes a donation to Animal Services, who gets the money is determined by the administration. The team doesn’t need cash… they need gift cards to Home Depot, Sports Chalet, OSH.. those kinds of places.

I was thinking if I could get people to contribute a little, we could get a gift card for a nice large amount and help them out.

I will collect the donations through my paypal account… log onto paypal just send to my email address listed which is cshells@sbcglobal.net. If you want to contribute, but don’t want to use paypal, please contact me and we can arrange something.

Thanks for reading this story. Thank you even more if you choose to contribute a donation!