Compassionate Librarian Suspended For Attempting to Rescue Squirrel

Cindy Goetz of the LaPorte IN library was suspended for caring too much about a squirrel trapped in the ceiling of the library where she works. According to the Library’s Executive Director Judy Hamilton, Goetz insisted that the squirrel not be captured in a kill-trap. A squirrel’s tale here .

December 2, 2005 by birdie Uncategorized 5

Anonymous Patron says:

December 2, 2005 at 8:58 pm

They can be dangerous
according to this story in yesterday’s news –
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4489792.stm

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slashgirl says:

December 2, 2005 at 9:18 pm

me too!
Once, back at the other school I used to work at, I ended up with a squirrel in the library! It was a nice day and the front doors were open (it was either before the kids were in or a day the kids had off). Anyhow, we (janitor and I) tried to get it to go out the window. Finally, after a half hour or so of chasing him around, the little bugger ran back out the front door. He’d had to come upstairs to get to the library.

We didn’t have to trap the thing, thank god.

s/

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Bibliofuture says:

December 2, 2005 at 9:45 pm

Wire eating animal
I had a squirrel get in my apartment while I was gone for a weekend. When I came back he had eaten through my computer wiring. (Power wire on the back) All my steroe wires to the speakers and my phone cords in the house. Over $500 in damage in one very modest apartment. The squirrel could have done thousands of dollars of damage in the library if he started to eat all the internet wiring.

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mdoneil says:

December 3, 2005 at 12:40 pm

There are a lot of squirrels in my life. Very odd
Squirrel is a fun word. I have 2 squirrel stories. I live in a condo and we have a wooden fence running along our property line about 10 meters from my door. One morning I awoke to quite a noise to find a squirrel trapped with its foot between two of the wooden slats. There was squirrel blood everywhere.

I knew the little fella had to go to the vet so I put on some heavy gloves (after rejecting oven mitts as being too cumbersone) got a big screwdriver and the cat’s carrying cage and headed out to capture the trapped squirrel. It was actually easier than I thought as I cupped him with two hands – he must have been quite tired, and leaned against the screwdriver which seperated the boards. I dropped his chirping, wriggling squirrelness into the cat carrier and slammed the door shut.

Then I took him to the vet who examined him, put him to sleep and sutured up his lacerations and gave him a clean bill of squirrel health. He was a bit annoyed when I came to pick him up and sat in the cage and screeched at everyone (a squirrel noise is very hard to describe- I always thought it was birds making that noise). The girl who collects the money (it was $42) looked at the squirrel and said to me “Your squirrel is kind of mean”. I replied: “Its not my squirrel.” That confused her, but she took my money none the less.

So I took the squirrel home and let it out near a tree which it promptly scampered up. The stiches come out in 7 days. (OK, I made that last bit up.)

My other squirrel story actually involves the library and it is available at http://www.lisnews.com/~mdoneil/journal/2737

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librarygal says:

December 5, 2005 at 7:28 am

squirrels are better than other options
In one branch where I worked I had to chase out peafowl twice. Those magestic creatures you see on postcards are huge, mean, they can fly, their call sounds like a woman being strangled, and when they poop they really poop. Chasing one of these around a five story building, opening windows as you go, trying to remember everywhere it landed so you can go back later to clean up the poop off the books, and remembering that it’s a crime to kill them was an adventure!

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