I was in my daughters room helping her with some new LED lights that she had gotten at Walmart that we were installing behind her bed. She has one of those loft beds from IKEA, it isn’t the easiest of things for an old man like myself to climb up into and climb down out of.
My wife starts calling for me from the other room, telling me to come quick. I yell back at her asking what’s up, knowing climbing back down from my daughters bed isn’t an easy proposition. She shouts back something to the effect of my son catching something in the backyard, but in her excitement I’m not quite sure what she said he caught.
I get to the deck in the backyard, and my son is holding a squirrel that is soaking wet, and he’s excitedly telling me how he saw the squirrel fall into the pool the kids play with, and start frantically trying to get out. He goes on to state that he saw the squirrel wasn’t going to be able to get out on its own, so he went in to help the squirrel.
It’s obvious the squirrel has ingested water as its very lethargic, so my wife takes the squirrel from my son and starts doing chest compressions trying to dislodge the water it had ingested. This process went on for almost ten minutes, and my wife (who is CPR trained) tells us that she can feel bubbles in the squirrels chest as well as a heartbeat, faint as it was. After close to ten minutes, the squirrel starts to perk up a bit, able to breathe on its own, although it still is very lethargic.
We prep the kids for the possibility that the squirrel might die on us, but the entire time my wife continues to rub the squirrel while doing compressions. After several more minutes of this action, the squirrel becomes more animated and alert making an effort to run. It only makes it a few inches before stopping again to rest.
After close to twenty minutes, the squirrel has recovered substantially, and we take it down to the grass to see if it wants to run off. The squirrel just sat there for another ten minutes, and finally it poked its head up, looked around, and ran off - good as new.
We were all relieved to see the squirrel run up the tree in our backyard, and to the best of our knowledge it is alive and doing well today. During this ordeal, my son named the squirrel Henry. Henry the squirrel.
I bring this to your attention as it illustrates a very important point that I think needs reinforcing. Sometimes, life throws a drowning squirrel your way and you need to think quick and react to deal with the situation. More importantly, when life throws those situations your way, odds are it isn’t something you’ve trained or prepared for.
I promise you when I tell you that my wife has never gone through any squirrel resuscitation training. But when faced with the challenge she adapted, she thought through the problem, and she went to work solving the problem. The solution she came up with may not have been what the “experts” would have suggested, but I promise you that there is at least one squirrel in this world happy with the plan she enacted.
So this week as you engage with those around you, my encouragement is simple. Don’t be afraid to jump in to a problem you see and find a way to solve it. You might be surprised at the outcome, and others around you will be thrilled to see the ideas you bring to the problem and in the process they might learn something new while you do as well.
So go on, find your own Henry the Squirrel and solve a problem.
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