{"id":247054,"date":"2025-07-08T04:19:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T04:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/247054\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T04:19:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T04:19:11","slug":"rescued-baby-squirrels-freeze-every-time-someone-walks-in-the-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/247054\/","title":{"rendered":"Rescued Baby Squirrels ‘Freeze’ Every Time Someone Walks In The Room"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nine baby thirteen-lined ground squirrels arrived at Oaken Acres Wildlife Center<\/a> after being rescued from a woman\u2019s backyard. They were lingering around an underground den where their mother had sadly passed away. The babies were too young to survive on their own, and by the time they were rescued, they were weak and dehydrated.<\/p>\n

\"thirteen-linedOaken Acres Wildlife Center<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do what’s called a \u2018body score on intake of each of our patients,\u201d Kathy Stelford, founder of Oaken Acres Wildlife Center, told The Dodo. \u201cTheir scores were in the 1+ to 2- range, very serious.”<\/p>\n

Each baby squirrel only weighed as much as a tablespoon of water; to make matters worse, they were cold and covered with fleas. Stelford’s team treated the squirrels for fleas, gave them fluids and placed them in a cozy incubator to warm up. Soon, the babies were feeling much, much better.<\/p>\n

\"thirteen-linedOaken Acres Wildlife Center<\/p>\n

As the team worked to care for the babies, the little squirrels tried their best to adjust to their new environment. There were so many new sights, sounds and smells to get used to. They were definitely scared \u2014 and that\u2019s when their freeze instincts kicked in.<\/p>\n

Thirteen-lined ground squirrels freeze when they\u2019re scared as a defense mechanism meant to prevent detection from predators. Obviously, no one at the center wanted to hurt them, but the scared babies didn\u2019t know that yet. As a result, they started to freeze anytime anyone came near them \u2014 and the result was the cutest, funniest game of freeze tag anyone\u2019s ever seen.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Oaken Acres Wildlife Center<\/p>\n

\u201cThey always act like this \u2014 as soon as you open their incubator, they freeze, almost like little mimes,\u201d the center wrote on Facebook<\/a>. \u201cThen, after a few seconds, in their trance-like state, one will move, and the others all start reacting.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the supervisors was able to capture a video of the squirrels freezing and unfreezing \u2014 and the positions they freeze in are truly hysterical.<\/p>\n

Despite their rough start in life, the babies are now doing incredibly well and getting bigger every day. They\u2019ll be at the center for another six weeks or so before hopefully being released back where they were found. Until then, their rescuers can\u2019t wait to see what antics they\u2019ll come up with next.<\/p>\n

\"Rescuer<\/a>Rescuer Arrives Just In Time To Save Bucket Full Of Wild Babies\u201cI was shocked \u2026\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nine baby thirteen-lined ground squirrels arrived at Oaken Acres Wildlife Center after being rescued from a woman\u2019s backyard.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3847],"tags":[9691,1716,728,70,1715,1713,16,15,1717],"class_list":{"0":"post-247054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-caitlin-jill-anders","9":"tag-daily-dodo","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-standard","13":"tag-the-dodo","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}