Five baby squirrels who were found hopelessly entangled by their tails have been successfully separated by animal rescue workers.
The juvenile grey squirrels were spotted knotted together in their nest and the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre at the Wisconsin Humane Society was asked to step in.
The animals’ tails had become snarled together along with the long-stemmed grasses and strips of plastic their mother had used as nest material.
Writing on Facebook, the rescue centre said: “You can imagine how wiggly and unruly (and nippy!) this frightened, distressed ball of squirrelly energy was, so our first step was to anaesthetise all five of them at the same time.”
Thus began the complicated process of gently snipping away at the grass and plastic – while keeping their tails, which are important for balance and warmth – intact.
“Now, one day later, they are all bright-eyed, and three of the five are ‘bushy-tailed’, but we’ll need to monitor all of them for a couple of days to watch for tail necrosis caused by impaired blood flow.”
