The tale of a tenacious mother

Every time we reach Navilu Kaadu, we unlock the door to the cottage with trepidation. It turns out that we are not only sharing the land with the creatures of the wild but, more often than not, our cottage too.

During our visit in October, we found a nest made from coir, lodged on the metal box housing our CCTV paraphernalia, above the window. It didn’t take long to trace the source of the coir…the stuffing inside our old chaise lounge!

The nest appeared devoid of life, so we cleared it out. Later that afternoon, our mutt Zoey started to growl at something on the floor beneath the CCTV set-up. I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sight of a tiny pink furless thing, barely over an inch, squirming on the ground.

We had the pup of an Indian palm squirrel aka three-striped palm squirrel (Funambulus palmarum) in our midst. Further inspection revealed the rest of the nest or dray, as a squirrel nest is called, behind our CCTV monitor with two more pups nestled inside! What we had cleared was just the dray’s entrance.

When in Bengaluru, we promptly deposit juvenile wildlings dislodged from their nests on the enormous raintree over our building, in the care of the Avian and Reptile Rehabilitation Centre (ARRC). ARRC rescues, rehabilitates, and releases injured, orphaned and diseased urban wildlife.

I messaged Jayanthi Kallam who helms ARRC, for counsel. Jayanthi suggested we leave the pup near the dray and keep watch. By sundown, the mum still hadn’t taken the pup in. We positioned the bed below the CCTV box to allow for a soft landing, should the pup tumble down.

Early the next morning, the tiny pup continued to lie outside the dray. Jayanthi asked to see pictures of the pup and the location of the nest.

“Looks healthy. The poor thing needs warmth. Warm rice in a sock should work,” she suggested. We had already placed the pup in a cloth-lined container perched on a glass of warm water, as a substitute for the mother’s body warmth. By now, the pup had been on its own for nearly 24 hours.

It was time for affirmative action. “The pup needs to go in! Put it directly inside the nest if you can reach it,” Jayanthi urged, allaying my fears that the mum could abandon her young for having been in human company. We gently placed the pup inside the dray along with its siblings.

Meanwhile, the alarmed mum who had till then managed to stay hidden inside the hood over the display monitor, dove down and scurried out through the gaping hole in the mosquito mesh.

We were now saddled with three newborn squirrel pups! I furiously typed out an SOS to Jayanthi.

“Female squirrels are devoted mothers. She will return. Give her free access, and she will resume her parenting,” she reassured me. We camped out on our front porch to avoid any further intrusion on the squirrel family’s privacy.

It turns out Jayanthi was spot on. It was dusk when I caught a blur of fur leaping out of the window.

The brave mum had been visiting the dray slap-bang in the middle of human habitation and nursing her brood, wagering her own life.

We cut short our stay and left for Bengaluru the next day with hope and a prayer that the pups safely made it to adulthood.

There is little that isn’t known about the Indian palm squirrel, beloved in Indian mythology as Lord Rama’s little helper in building a bridge across the Indian Ocean to Lanka. These lively rodents are omnivorous. They relish fruits and nuts along with a sampling of insects, reptiles and bird eggs thrown into the mix. They indulge in ‘scatter hoarding,’ stashing away food for lean times in numerous hideouts.

Indian palm squirrels are the only squirrel species that do not hibernate during winter. The union territory of Puducherry honours the Indian palm squirrel as its state animal.

Returning to Navilu Kaadu a month later, we found no sign of the squirrel family in the cottage. The dray was now well and truly empty. The devoted, determined and daring squirrel mum had successfully raised her pups and delivered them to the great yonder beyond the cottage.

Rooting for Nature is a monthly column on an off-kilter urban family’s trysts with nature on a natural farm.

The author chipped away at a software marketing career before shifting gears to sustainable entrepreneurship and natural farming. She posts as @ramyacoushik. Reach her at [e-mail]