“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible;
and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
(Francis of Assisi)
He was never supposed to live. And yet here he was three years later; a quiet, rather standoffish little fox squirrel; his coat still bearing a few white scars from his long, fierce baby battle with squirrel fibroma, aka “squirrel pox”; his slightly blunted profile giving him a rather odd look when combined with partially blind eyes and one missing upper incisor.
Tiny was a rare winter-born baby transferred here from another wildlife rehabilitator. He was just weaning so between reaching the age when all humans except foster mother become suspect and the endless ministrations required by the weeks turned into months of his painful illness, he was never particularly fond of being handled. At the time of his arrival, the pox virus was just starting to peak in his system and its resulting tumors were everywhere. The worst of them developed quickly and enormously around his eyes and for a period of time his eyes were for all intents and purposes sealed shut by them; despite a rigorous schedule of cleansing and antibiotic drops and ointment this took its toll, however, and he lost part of the sight in both of them.
But somehow, despite the horrors, Tiny managed to pull through. And as the months passed and the tumors receded and the scars began to fill in with white hair and then all but the worst of them faded to a normal ticked-tan fox squirrel color, Tiny finished growing up. As a mature, adult fox squirrel he was small in stature but, always a good eater, he tipped the scale at exactly two pleasingly plump pounds. His nose and paw pads and other visible skin remained determinedly baby pink instead darkening into the more typical dark brownish black, thereby earning him the nickname of “Tiny Pink Poxer”.
Squirrel pox is an insidious disease and can leave scars not visible to the naked eye by damaging internal organs. Such damage may not always be overcome but as Tiny turned one, then two, then three it seemed that he had managed to skirt the worst and so we stopped worrying about him.
Then one day I noticed that he hadn’t scarfed down his lunch. Not entirely unusual in the springtime, when the cycle of shedding winter weight and molting comes around. But when one day turned into two and Tiny began to lose interest in his bedtime snack nuts, I began to watch him more closely. On the third day, much to his chagrin, I even pulled him out to give him a hands-on, visual exam, especially to check that his three incisors hadn’t started to cause him trouble. I found nothing amiss, however, but the next day his left eye began to swell. This was the eye that had gotten the worst of it during his babyhood battle with squirrel pox so when it was no better I took Tiny out of his cage and put him into a small carrier where he could be more closely observed and called my vet for an appointment.
By Friday’s appointment the eye was so large Tiny was having trouble closing his eyelids fully over it but the vet exam did not find anything immediately obvious as cause. If things did not improve the only option was an enucleation (removal of the eye) and we scheduled a follow-up visit for Monday to make the final determination.
The weekend passed with a gritty, grinding slowness. Tiny grew no better; indeed, his eye continued to slowly swell more and more and caring for him in this painful condition was deja vu. My spider senses were on high alert and I fought a palpable, gut-wrenching dread; the inevitable knowing that this story was not going to have the ending I would write myself.
Monday morning it was decided to proceed with the enucleation. I would drop Tiny off at the vet clinic on Tuesday morning and by early afternoon could check on his status. And so on Tuesday morning I said goodbye to Tiny and then cried all the way home. Once there I determinedly gathered up my faith and prayed like a madwoman that my fear was unfounded and more the stuff of stress than intution.
When the phone rang at noon I was not really surprised, and though my first reaction was to glom onto the happy thought that the surgery was already over, I knew better. Still, the words were like a knife stuck through my heart. As Tiny was being prepped for surgery, his heart stopped and despite all the medical tricks to restart it, he was gone. I could hear the pain in my vet’s voice as he told me the story. We hung up the phone and I collapsed in a heap of sobs.
It has now been two months and the sadness has finally embedded itself into a place of permanence; the same way every sadness ends up becoming a part of the very fiber of our being. It is quiet, the same way Tiny Poxer was quiet and equally, determinedly settled in his untouchable place during his short life with us.
