Ace in the Hole For Torture Squirrel

On Tuesday, I was walking my dog adjacent to an apartment building about a block from my house. Jasper stumbled across, and then excitedly attacked, a squirrel lying right beside the sidewalk. The squirrel seemed to be in serious trouble. It was a paraplegic, and couldn't move its rear legs. Using its front legs, the squirrel scrambled to get out of Jasper's way. Jasper went nuts, barking at the troubled animal.

I took Jasper home, and returned to rescue the squirrel. I had trouble finding the squirrel, but finally found it desperately trying to scramble down a ramp in to the parking lot at the apartment building. A lot of fight in this squirrel!

I scooped the squirrel into a plastic basin and took it home. Once in my yard, the squirrel soon escaped the basin and hid under some cardboard in the yard. Later, the squirrel tried to escape the yard. The squirrel found a gap behind a slat in the fence, and slipped through. There is an anti-dog barrier behind the fence, which my neighbors erected in 2001 to keep their dog out of my yard, after their dog broke in and killed my rabbit. So, the squirrel could hole up there, and take refuge, but couldn't really escape unless it had full use of its limbs. I laid out some food and water for the trapped squirrel.

I suppose it was a form of torture to try and rescue this squirrel. On Wednesday, I was busy and couldn't pay attention to Torture Squirrel. By Thursday, I lost track of the squirrel.

On Friday, I finally located Torture Squirrel again, buried deep under leaf litter in an inaccessible hole behind and under the fence slat. I'm not sure I can get the squirrel out of its hole even if I had the squirrel's cooperation. If the squirrel dies, retrieval will be urgent, but really hard to do. So, today, I put water and some food in plastic bags and dropped the materials into the hole, to help keep Torture Squirrel alive until I can figure out how to retrieve it.

Reminds me of the predicament in the 1951 movie, Ace in the Hole, starring Kirk Douglas and filmed out there west of Gallup, in New Mexico, near the Arizona border.