I love all four of the Guardians, though the relationship is much different than it was with Kevin. They don’t get the out-of-cage time he got, there’s no way to spend the amount of time with them I spent with him, and they’re bonded to each other and mostly see me as the provider of meals.
Still, there is a favorite. In the beginning, I thought it would be tiny Yondu—we fought so hard together that first week for her survival. But little Miss Feisty, adorable as she is, is much too independent to cozy up to me. It was another that has snuck into my heart and taken the Favorite status.
It’s this guy, my little Rocket man. Of the four, he’s the only one that seeks me out and wants to be petted. I can wrestle some with Nebula, and she likes that. But Rocket, sweet Rocket, will climb on my hands & arms and loves back scritches & belly rubs. The shyest of the four, he waits til late at night when the others are sound asleep to come out & spend time with me. He gets shy when the phone comes out, but I managed to get these videos tonight.
I can’t play with him like this during the day because Nebula isn’t to be trusted with the open cage door. I can pet her a little bit while we’re wrestling, but Drax & Yondu aren’t interested in being petted at all. I still pull The Littles out one by one to feed them, but Drax especially is starting to resist that.
In other news, we’ll start building their soft release cage next weekend. It will be 6’x8’ and 8’ tall. Nebula is almost 10 weeks old, and The Littles are almost 8 weeks, so the May 1st date is going to work out perfectly.
One additional note: squirrels have a super keen sense of smell. Extremely sensitive. I learned with Kevin to wash laundry in unscented detergent, wash hands and bathe with unscented soap, and no nail polish allowed. Immediately before these videos were made, I had put some moisturizer on my face. You can see in the videos that Rocket keeps sniffing my fingertips and turning away. He obviously could smell the scent of the moisturizer and didn’t like it. Normally, he would have climbed right onto my hand.
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