{"id":66999,"date":"2025-05-02T00:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T00:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/66999\/"},"modified":"2025-05-02T00:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T00:13:09","slug":"tiny-rescued-baby-slept-for-102-days-before-finally-opening-her-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/66999\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiny Rescued Baby Slept For 102 Days Before Finally Opening Her Eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"

When a Good Samaritan noticed someone in the bottom of their empty recycling bin in the dead of winter, they were concerned. They quickly realized it was a tiny dormouse attempting to hibernate in the wrong spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually curled up and snoozing in hollow tree branches or dense shrubs until around March, the bottom of a bin is no place to dwell in these freezing temperatures, so the caller got her to us,\u201d Wildlife Aid Foundation<\/a> said in a press release.<\/p>\n

\"dormouse\"Wildlife Aid Foundation<\/p>\n

Wildlife Aid Foundation immediately agreed to take in the tiny mouse and named her Walnut. They made sure she was in good condition, giving her lots of food and fluids, before placing her in an artificial nest, where she could comfortably reenter hibernation.<\/p>\n

\"dormouse\"Wildlife Aid Foundation<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what Walnut did \u2014 and for 102 days, she was dead to the world.<\/p>\n

Finally, after a very long snooze, Walnut started to stir and finally opened her tiny eyes permanently again.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last two weeks she has become increasingly active,\u201d Wildlife Aid wrote on Facebook.<\/p>\n

After giving her a safe place to hibernate, Walnut\u2019s rescuers made sure she was healthy and ready to head back to the wild. Then, they let her go.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was only right that the Surrey Dormouse Group gave our adorable, red-listed dormouse her freedom day into a hazel dormouse-friendly site, giving her the best chance of success back in the wild,\u201d Wildlife Aid wrote.<\/p>\n

\"dormouse\"Wildlife Aid Foundation<\/p>\n

It was hard to say goodbye, especially after calling her their \u201ccutest patient of the year.\u201d It was time, though, and little Walnut will always be grateful to her rescuers for giving her a chance.<\/p>\n

\"Researcher<\/a>Researcher Finds \u2018Sleepy Mouse\u2019 \u2014 Then Realizes It’s Someone ExtraordinaryIt \u201cjust about made the team combust\u201d \ud83d\ude2e<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When a Good Samaritan noticed someone in the bottom of their empty recycling bin in the dead of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3847],"tags":[9691,1716,70,1715,1713,16,15,1717],"class_list":{"0":"post-66999","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-science","11":"tag-standard","12":"tag-the-dodo","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114435352417453956","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66999","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=66999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}