A Terrible Thing I Had to Do

About two years ago I was burning some trash in a barrel - paper, mostly, when I noticed an old wooden birdhouse in a notch of a tree.  It hadn't been used in a long time and I decided to burn it.  I threw it into the roaring fire and a flying squirrel came out and I could see little ones inside it.  I grabbed the house and threw it out and in so ding I lightly burned my arm, but I couldn't get the adult.  I couldn't stand the horror of her burning and I grabbed a metal rod that I used to stir the burning trash and killed her with it.  The little ones were about grown and were unharmed by the fire.  I put the house back in the notch of the tree with them in it.  I hope they were big enough to fend for themselves.

I still feel very bad about it, but I had no way of knowing there were flying squirrels there.  One should always check things before doing what I did.

A few months later I was walking down my driveway to the mailbox and as I walked beside a bradford pear tree where I had a birdhouse I saw something inside.  It was a furry little head with two great big eyes.  At that moment I was hoping that it was one of the little ones that almost died in the fire.

The eastern flying squirrel, Glaucomys volans, of the order, rodenta, is a beautiful little animals.  Their fur is as soft as a vicuna's, of South America.  Thank God, they are so small that it wouldn't be cost effective to raise them for the fur trade.

I have seen many close-up in the woods.  They are primarily nocturnal, as is evidenced by their very large eyes. But sometimes they venture out of their homes in the day, which is usually a hole in a tree.  With all the timber cutting, they are losing their homes, unfortunately.  I don't believe they build nests of leaves and twigs like gray squirrels, so they are in danger of extinction.

Once when I was deer hunting in a swampy place just after daylight, I saw a gray streak of something gliding toward me from up in a tree.  I was standing by an oak and it landed on the opposite side, not knowing I was there.  As quietly and as slowly as I could, I peered around the tree and I was at eye-level with it.  It was an amazing experience, one that I will never forget.