I was only seven when my parents hired a chimneysweep to wipe out the cobwebs on our brick flue. They didn’t expect him to stumble into a nest of four baby squirrels so tiny they had veiny, bluish, hairless skin and fused eyes. The chimneysweep brought the nest of baby squirrels into our house, but my mother insisted we must put them back, that maybe their mother would return for them, and that if she didn’t, perhaps it was God’s will for them to die.
I was having none of that. I had heard that animals will often reject their young if they have been touched by human hands, and since these baby squirrels bore the scent of the chimneysweep, I was unwilling to take a chance. I was a second-grader on a mission.