It’s really hard to turn away when you find an injured person or animal. Simone Serfontein from South Africa definitely knows this feeling. In October of 2016, she found a baby squirrel who fell out of a tree and her mother was nowhere to be found. “When we found her, she was still a ‘pinky’ and a funny looking creature with no hair. She was around 5 – 6 days old when we picked her up. Ice cold and screaming for her mom who unfortunately never came back for her.” she told Bored Panda.
Simone knew that the squirrel would never survive in the wild alone, so decided to raise her and named her Dingetjie
But no matter how cute these little animals are, “raising a Squirrel is definitely not an easy task,” Simone admits. “For the first few weeks I fed her every hour, even at night I normally set my alarm to feed her and help her with the ‘bathroom situation’,” she explained. For three whole months, Simone brought her new little friend to work and let Dingetjie sleep close to her body.
“I got her a small shoebox with some blankets inside, but she did not want to sleep in at all. She felt warm and safe with me and to this today she still sleeps in the bed with me.” Slowly Dingetjie has become a beloved pet. “We used to always take her with us when traveling and she always seemed to enjoy it. She would get out of her traveling cage in the car and get onto our shoulders and just enjoy the road trip with us.”
n April she gave birth to Tinkie in the nest she made in Simone’s closet. Sadly Dingetjie’s baby passed away a few months later. Last year, in September, she gave birth to another baby – Mistie. And once again Simone had a chance to raise a baby squirrel because Dingetjie was not producing any milk
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