Baby squirrels

At a time when the financial markets are teetering on a precipice and a presidential election is looming that looks even more fateful than the last two, a heartwarming story a about baby squirrels may be just what we need. This was in the Sunday Times:

HOUSTON — Residents are finding tiny refugees in the leafy debris left behind by Hurricane Ike: baby squirrels. More than 1,000 of them, some less than three inches long, have been brought to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which has set up the equivalent of a squirrel neonatal unit.

Rows of glass incubators fill a room, each containing litters of orphaned squirrels curled up together on fleece blankets....

Volunteers, who have come from as far away as Los Angeles and Minneapolis to care for animals displaced by the hurricane, sit around a table drawing formula into nipple-tipped syringes, which allow them to deliver a small stream of liquid into the baby squirrels’ mouths. “If you don’t control the flow, they get pneumonia,” Ms. Schmalz said.