Just Call Me Mrs. Doolittle

If I had a dime for every stray/orphaned animal I have taken in I could own a zoo. Heck, I have even tried to take in ones that had homes, but wandered by my house making me assume they were lost. Every one of them made it back to their respective homes, simply because they lived on the same street as me. For a while it was becoming the canine du jour. I had a system after I successfully coaxed them into my home. Each rescued dog was a given a spa treatment, along with "found" bulletins spread through the neighborhood. Then, I would alert local vets, call animal shelters and feed them. I am proud to say that every one of them made it back to their respective homes. I guess that was pretty easy given the fact they all ended up living within a 1 block radius of us. Ok, Ok, perhaps I was a little too zealous over the plight of stray dogs. Sometimes as I would drive through the neighborhood, I would see a dog loose, struggle them into into my car only to see the owner who actually was a jogger, chasing me down the street. I became the Subaru drivin' dog thief. Other times it was cats....like the time I bailed a cat out of the humane society thinking it was my mom's. Turns out it wasn't. Or the time I was heck bent on fostering abandoned kittens and would sit and pick fleas off them much like a monkey would do to her baby. This past week I had a new animal to add to my growing resume. 5 week old baby squirrels. They were discovered by the carpenters working on the house, nestled in some broccoli in the garden. It appeared two of them had fallen out of the nest and how they survived, remains a mystery to me. After several calls, tears, pedialyte, goat's milk, puppy formula, heating pads, flea treatments, Lucky's huge help and support, chickens flying out of the coop, wrangling chickens BACK into the coop and trying to keep the little babes alive, I felt exhausted and worried for the hours ahead in which I would need to feed them. Because these squirrels are considered invasive and non native, no one would help other then offering to euthanize them for me. This only fueled my passion for their survival. Surprisingly enough they survived and even improved over the night. I felt victorious! Thanks to my vet's office, one of the techs rehabbed squirrels and offered to care for them. Of course, it was hard for me to give them over as I had most certainly fallen head over heels and considered for a 1/5th of a 1/2 of a second rehabbing them myself and releasing them to the wild. Of course, the Audobon told me I would be breaking the law which only served to encourage me further. Well, guess who showed up yesterday? A certain mother squirrel sauntered into the yard like a little drunken hussy. Obviously she had quite the weekend, tail all fluffed and such. I think the courts would have deemed her an unfit mother but I'm not one to judge. At any rate, given my ability to attract a variety of animals into my home, I'm a little nervous who is next. Perhaps the neighbor's bunny.