While
cooking, a morsel fell on the floor; I picked that up, opened the window and
put it on the windowsill thinking that some bird would take it away. I turned back
and started cleaning cooking range and slab. I went to the sink to clean the
scrubber. The sink was located close to window. I looked out. I found a baby
squirrel relishing that morsel. I was happy to see it. The tiny hands were
holding the foodstuff very delicately and were chewing it extremely slowly as if
it did not know how to feed itself. May be it was its first meal, outside the
nest and out of the mother’s custody!
In
the evening, I put peanuts on the windowsill. And I was amazed to see that two
baby squirrels were feeding themselves. The explorer baby squirrel must have called
its sibling to enjoy novel food items. I increased my frequency of keeping
various food bits and pieces on the windowsill. As soon as I kept any edible
item on windowsill, I did not know how but they came to know and would quickly come
to the windowsill to feed themselves.
Two
days went by, watching two of them growing up. In the evening, I cut the fresh
watermelon for myself. I took out the seeds and put them on the windowsill for
the babies. When I returned to the kitchen after feasting on melon, to my
utmost surprise there were three babies on the sill. One was searching with its
nose, which seed to be picked up, the other one was holding the seed in its
tiny hands, removing outer cover with its recently grown sharp teeth to enjoy
the soft nut inside and the third one was bewildering what to do. It could not decide,
as it was the newcomer, smallest and fragile. The most active baby came near,
put its mouth close to the weakest sibling as if teaching how to hold, bite,
chew and swallow food. And the next moment, little one was copying its healthy siblings.
Suddenly, mother squirrel came jumping on each one of them, quickly filled her
mouth with seeds and hopped back. After all she was a mother, she had to stock
for the rainy days!
The
three hungry babies loved to eat peanuts, pomegranate seeds, watermelon seeds
and muskmelon seeds. But most of the time, they were so hungry that they could
just eat anything and everything!
The
day before yesterday, I put some water in the bowl for them, as it was too hot
outside.
Pic
: Although it was very difficult to click them but somehow I managed to click
one of the three babies. P.S. - This post is now a featured post on os.me. You can read and comment on my post at https://os.me/short-stories/the-hungry-babies/
