To see animals suffer like this, and to be powerless to help, throws a black cloud over life for the time being. I longed for my pets to die, and wondered if I could chloroform them. Every morning on waking I hoped to find them gone.
The end came on the last day of February, about five weeks after I had first noticed that Peter was not quite himself, and a little over a fortnight since Ruby had begun to droop.
And here let me say, in parenthesis, that I had written to the authorities at the Zoo for advice. The reply I received was kind and courteous; but said that probably my pets were suffering from consumption, and that nothing could be done. Perhaps I might try a little Benger’s food. Now with all due deference to the larger experience and knowledge of the Zoological Society, if I had known how important it is to keep little mammals warm enough in their sleeping quarters in cold weather, and if I had taken mine in at the very first signs of illness and kept them in a warm place like the conservatory, I cannot help thinking that I should have saved them.
I think it is commonly supposed that nothing can be done for sick squirrels because the first incipient signs of illness are not noticed and dealt with in time.
On the morning of the day they died neither of them came out of the sleeping-box at all. So after a while, with a good deal of difficulty, I unhooked the box from the wall, and brought it inside. When I opened the lid and looked in, each little animal was crouching in its separate compartment hiding its little face in the darkest corner.
Ruby was too far gone to resist when I picked her up and slipped her inside a warm flannel cosy, with a hot water-bag under it.
When I turned my attention to Peter, he suddenly leapt out and flew round the room in an agony of terror. He scrambled somehow up the portière over the door, where he used to go to hide long ago in his babyhood, and then fell with a scream. He would not let me pick him up, but pantingly struggled out of my reach. After a time the poor little thing somehow found his way to the old serge bag behind the curtain.
I tried to feed Ruby with warm sweetened milk, but scarcely a drop went down. Her little body was just skin and bone. She feebly snuggled away into the farthest corner of the cosy.