A Ballard man came home to hear a strange sound coming from his kitchen yesterday evening. “A squeaking something in the vent above my stove,” Dusty said. After getting out the flashlight, he discovered a baby squirrel had crawled down the fan vent and taken up residence next to the warm light inside.

Dusty posted a message in the My Ballard forum under the name Dweezil, asking for ideas. “Trying to disassemble the fan above my oven to pull a baby squirrel out. Anyone know who to contact? Not the exterminator.” Within a few hours, My Ballard readers had furnished links to animal rescue sites while he gave a play-by-play description of the rescue. “I managed to get the fan off. Just trying to lure him out now,” he said.

After wrestling with the fan and detaching it from the wall, he poured the little squirrel into a box, recording video of the cute little creature. “Just wondering who to take him to,” Dusty wrote in the forum. After reading the wildlife rescue sites, he had a plan. “I’m about to put him up into a tree and hope that momma will rescue him,” he described on the video, zooming in on the squirrel. “It’s kind of hard to let go of this cute little bugger.”

So up he went. “I put the baby squirrel in a box, taped it to a tree, put a sign on it, ‘Don’t Disturb,'” he explained while quietly videotaping from his back porch. “Just waiting for momma.”