Scampering Away With My Heart

"You mustn't give your heart to a wild thing," Holly Golightly warned in "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Oblivious to Holly or Hollywood dogma, my wild things hang upside down on the window screen and husk pecans at the sill and chatter their teeth. I love them way too much. When there is nothing in my mailbox but bills and rejection slips, nurturing these wild things comforts me.

The first squirrel showed up at my window one May day 20 years ago, clutching a crust of bread. A few days later, he brought a bagel and some friends. Then I began feeding them, and countless squirrels since. Some had names, some didn't. Some had broken paws, torn ears, stubby tails. A lot had babies. I've cried over the squirrels that foolishly crossed the street in front of heedless drivers. I buried a few.

My first close encounter of the squirrel kind happened when I was 9 years old and found one motionless at the base of my grandfather's oak tree. I picked him up, but he was beyond saving. My mother and aunt ran out of the house, yelling in alarm: "Put that down! It's dirty! They're full of germs!"

He looked clean enough, but I did as I was told; when I was 9, before global warming, before online predators, before even the Cuban Missile Crisis, germs were the worst things a child had to fear. I was rushed inside and my hands stuck in soapy water until they were deemed sufficiently sterilized.

Since then I have handled countless squirrels without foaming at the mouth or my hands falling off, though there was a week one summer when every finger sported a Band-Aid. Must have been the attraction of that Toasted Almond nail polish.

My neighbors have got my number. The minute the squirrels do something, well, squirrelly, I hear about it. My downstairs neighbor still reminds me how, years ago, one of "my" squirrels made off with the biggest watermelon in his garden, a feat such as has only been accomplished before by the pyramid builders of Giza. "Your squirrels dug up my lobelias!" grumbled another neighbor, gesturing at her garden, plundered for bulbs and land-mined with walnuts.

Hey, that's what they do for a living.

Participation in a very special Yahoo e-mail group for the past eight years has made me feel that I'm not, well, nuts. A panicked call -- "A baby squirrel just fell from a tree!" "A cat got a squirrel!" -- meets with comfort and sage advice.

Some rehabber members have as pets squirrels that would not survive in the wild. Frannie is blind in both eyes. Tripod was, as her name suggests, three-legged and her "roommate" Joni had two legs and got around on a specially made cart. Yelly has no teeth and loves to cuddle. And the pinkies, or babies, come and go. Birthdays -- of group members and their squirrels -- are celebrated online. Family deaths are marked by the dedication of -- what else? -- trees. Those experiencing hardship receive promises of "squirrel angels" to ease their suffering. The mother of a member who lives in Maryland was safely relocated to a motel from hurricane-ravaged Alabama in 2004 through the efforts of a South Carolina member who used to work for Holiday Inn and pulled strings.

Every spring, members fly or drive to a secret location in North Carolina at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains for a four-day convention with a side trip to Brevard -- "Home of the White Squirrel" -- thrown in. "I start saving as soon as we get home from the last one! I have one savings account, at the bank, that is just for convention, and I put $ in every month and don't touch it for anything else!" confesses Murph in an e-mail. She and Kathleen fly in from Florida. Other members have come from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Texas, South Carolina, Alabama and Colorado. They come away with gifts: squirrel note cards, squirrel garden stakes, squirrel road signs, squirrel candles, squirrel picture frames, squirrel tote bags, squirrel dish towels and sometimes -- squirrels.

Last year, just before another convention I couldn't attend, I took a 5-week-old male squirrel I'd found to a nature center. He had fallen four stories; it looked like he was tumbling from the sky. The person on duty tsk-tsked and noted he wasn't moving. He had moved plenty when I kept him in a box lined with old T-shirts overnight. I thought of a patient who does worse after the diagnostician sadly shakes his head at him.

I asked what would happen if he didn't mend enough to be released. "We'll euthanize him," she chirped. "There are thousands of squirrels."

I thought of Tripod and Joni and wanted to scoop my little squirrel back up and drive him down to North Carolina where so many of my friends' less-than-perfect squirrels live regally. I still wish I had.

Months later, when I found another baby squirrel in dire straits, I rushed her 10 miles to hand her over to another member of the list who plunked her inside her blouse. She restored her to health and granted me naming privileges. I called her Sparky.

Truth is, though I have a T-shirt commemorating the event, I have yet to attend a squirrel convention. I want to go, but I can't. Squirrel sitters are in short supply and there would be nobody here to catch them if they fell from the sky.