I have a squirrel that visits me every morning for some premium deluxe cashews. I’m slowly getting him used to being comfortable with me in the hope he will be a shoulder squirrel. Has anyone done this before?

by mg118118118

27 comments

  3. Did you want a crazed wild animal scratching everything in your house and shitting everywhere? Let them in.

  4. Squirrels are wild animals, they are not pets to staying inside your house. So be careful, for sure you still can give him nuts but don’t let him be your pet or go inside your house

  5. You could be the first. Let us know how it works out for you

  6. Technically the grey one are invasive so i guess no one care as long as you are not treating it cruelly…?

    But i doubt it will be domesticated. The process is actually slow you need to take this relatively tame guy’s kids in and keep cross breeding it and get it to be tamer…

  8. I caught some in a friend’s loft in a metal cage thing..When went to pick cage up they went ballistic..Was like lightning letting them out..It was then i learnt they just look cute

  10. Just get a couple of Gerbils, they’re smaller so the teeth and claws hurt less.

  11. Does anybody else remember the last time an infectious disease jumped the species barrier?

  12. Cute little vicious bastards. You haven’t domesticated the squirrel, he’s just being a w***e and selling his presence for a few nuts.

  13. I wish, but they run as soon as they see me come out the door. I did befriend a fox for a few months before he moved on to find his vixen. He used to come and curl up on my outdoor sofa with me and take a nap while I was out there smoking and streaming movies. I never did stroke him although I really wanted to but he would jump up lay down about 1-2 feet away and snooze.

  14. A few years ago, around possibly October-time because it was very dark at 6pm, a juvenile squirrel scampered up to me one night on a main road when I was walking my two terriers. I tried to shoo it away but it just followed me and sat by my feet while my dogs were going mental trying to get at it so I picked it up and it clung to my shoulder. I don’t recommend that. One of my dogs jumped up ripping the tip of its tail so I tucked the squirrel into my coat. I don’t recommend that either.

    I couldn’t bear to leave it on the main road.

    When I got home I put the extraordinarily tame squirrel into a pet carrier with comfy bedding and fed it carrot and broccoli. The next morning I took it to the vets so they could check its tail and I asked them if I should call wildlife rehab. They reassured me. I left the sweet little thing with them, only realising weeks later that vets don’t release non-native species. Fingers crossed they gave it to a wildlife centre.

    A friend a few months earlier had ended up in hospital with stitches after she picked up a squirrel in her house.

  16. Raised an abandoned, practically newborn squirrel by hand. Worked with a vet, etc. Eventually had to release him in a game preserve as, according to the vet and his behavior as observed, even hand-raised, they revert to their wild state.

  17. Man fuck these little bastards.

    My daughter tried to chase one and grab it because she wanted it as a pet, but they ganged up on her and pushed her into this massive sinkhole that magically appeared in our garden.

  18. My parents had a squirrel that would come into the house in the morning and sit at the table, waiting for its toast. It got so friendly it would follow my dad to the shops, along with their cat and dog, and they would wait outside for him. My mum thought it was her dead aunt reincarnated as a squirrel.

  19. About 40 years ago, someone I worked with found a kit (baby squirrel) and no parents showed up, so his wife reared it. It turns out to be particularly difficult and very time consuming to do this, but they succeeded. It regarded them as mum/dad. They did let it out when it was grown, but it spent much time indoors and didn’t go back to the wild (at least while I knew them). I lost touch and don’t know what happened long term. It was a grey squirrel like the picture.

  20. People have definitely done this before, but squirrels are bitey which is why they don’t sell them in pet shops.

  22. This is how ebola and covid starts, leave these wild animals alone please.

  23. Domestication requires genetic changes, so you need to breed him with other people-friendly squirrels to achieve domestication.

    And unless you know a lot about animals, you should definitely avoid taming him.

    As he still has all his wild instincts he may become aggressive towards you out of the blue and bite, giving you nasty diseases. He may also flee and starve to death because he is used to you feeding him.

    I get it’s tempting to feed him, but you are doing him a disservice in the long run by getting him dependent on you and other humans as a food source.

  24. I think some really important things need to be said:

    If you’re bitten badly things will end badly for the squirrel and absolutely could end badly for you. Unfortunately these lil guys can introduce some serious bacteria which could be life-changing. Not joking. Have fun googling.

    You need to seriously check your local laws because you might not be allowed to have tamed wildlife in your home. Let alone how hard it is to ethically house these at home, think a big aviary situation.

    The more you tame a wild animal the more that animal will put itself in danger and the higher the risk you’ll remove a healthy wild animal from its natural environment because “it’d be fun to have a squirrel friend” kind of logic. They could bother other humans who hurt them, are spending more time in human areas and risk being mauled by dogs, they can slowly lose or lessen their natural instincts which get taken over by the easiness of being fed by a human.

    If you want to hang with critters, see if your local wildlife rescue needs a volunteer.

    These endeavours are all fun and games until they’re not. Think seriously if this is what’s best for the animal.

    (Also you can’t domesticate anything, you can only tame it.)

    It’s one thing to give peanuts to a squirrel in a park (bite risk is still enough you shouldn’t do this), but this is something else.

  25. They are an invasive species. They will gain your trust and when you notice the trap you and your family will be substituted by them.

    They rule the world. Haven’t you seen Rick and Morty?

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