A Happy Ending For Pregnant Squirrel Trapped In Spray Foam, Thanks To Rescuers

Let’s get the happy ending out of the way right up front: Pretty Momma and her three little ones are healthy and doing fine.

But that squirrel has got some kind of story to tell them one day.

As do the humans at Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center in Hampton Bays, which is celebrating 20 years of emergency care for wild animals, but has never had a tale quite like this one. It involves a pregnant rodent minding her own business, a can of spray foam, and a group of people committed to getting that not-so-guaranteed happy ending.

It started on the morning of March 4, when Joe Rocco decided to take a call.

That part’s not unusual: The 34-year-old from Flanders has been volunteering at the center for two years, providing rescue and transport of animals that are injured or in distress. This year, from January through late March, he’d already logged 106 calls.

Mr. Rocco, who “completely transformed” a former police car into a rescue vehicle, typically takes the calls involving injured deer. “I love doing the deer calls — the deer are my favorite,” he said. He checks out injured animals, assesses their condition and, when appropriate, takes them to the center for treatment by the trained staff there.

“The majority of the time, it’s not, like, a happy scenario for the deer, because they’re in bad shape,” he added.

On the morning of March 4, it was a different animal in need: The initial report was that a squirrel had “a little bit of spray foam on it,” and someone needed to respond to “wipe it off and release it.”

So Mr. Rocco headed to Hampton Bays, where a homeowner had been using spray foam to close a 2-inch gap between the roof and wall along the soffit on an accessory building under renovation.

He found the man, who was distraught enough to call for help, and found out why.

“If you read the message and saw what I saw, it didn’t add up,” Mr. Rocco said.

The squirrel, which had been huddled inside the space, was now blanketed in the spray foam — and stuck to the wood. “I couldn’t even reach in and get her to pull her out,” he said. “She was literally stuck in there.”

It was a simple mistake: The homeowner “was spraying the foam in, and he didn’t know that the squirrel was in there.” But the sticky spray foam has two qualities: it expands quickly and dries fast. “Just by the grace of God, the spray foam didn’t completely cover her face, because she would have suffocated,” he said.

Mr. Rocco went to work. “I’m there to get the animal,” he said. “That’s my job, to get the animal safely from the predicament it got itself into, and bring it to the center, so they can work their magic here.”

With the homeowner’s help, they removed a board to try to better reach the hidden spot. But they still couldn’t get her off the board: “She was really sealed in there.”

Mr. Rocco picks up the story: “So I was, like, ‘If it’s cool with you, and you have a tool, we could cut the wood, and I could bring her on the piece of wood. I thought it was less stressful that way than trying to pull her off the two-by-four.”

Two quick cuts, and they pulled the “plump” — foreshadowing! — squirrel out on the makeshift wooden stretcher. “She was mad,” he recalled, “but she couldn’t do anything about it.”

Back at the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center, Valerie Van Houten, a licensed veterinary technician and the hospital supervisor for the center, was about to see something new.

The foam had hardened — “it was completely cured already,” Ms. Van Houten recalled. “I’ve never had to deal with it before, so we weren’t sure about the best way to get it off.”

They knew time was a factor, because any wild animal in treatment is undergoing a great deal of stress, and the stress can get so bad it causes cardiomyopathy: an animal’s overstressed heart can simply stop.

“We dropped everything when she got in. She had to be tended to as an emergency,” Ms. Van Houten said.

But what to do?

The squirrel, a little under 2 pounds, was given a sedative, then placed on an anesthesia machine, as a crew of three — Ms. Van Houten was joined by wildlife care technicians Danielle Sheehan and Doria Canino, the latter an intern — tried to use warm water to wash off the hardened foam. No luck.

Meanwhile, another staffer was googling ways to remove spray foam. “So it was kind of a group effort of people looking into it while we were trying things,” Ms. Van Houten said.

They settled on acetone, which ended up being the right call — it softened and even dissolved the foam. Using children’s toothbrushes, they carefully worked the animal free, trying to avoid areas where she had lost fur and the skin was irritated.

“It’s not our first choice, definitely not our first choice,” Ms. Van Houten said of using the chemical. “Just because it’s so pungent. And just not good for the animal — if they lick the fur after, you don’t want them ingesting it.”

After the squirrel was freed from the board and cleaned of the foam, she got a thorough bath in Dawn dishwashing liquid. “Probably, for us to be fully done, it took about an hour from start to finish,” Ms. Van Houten said.

The animal was taken off anesthetic, then given oxygen before being placed in an outside nursery suite. The struggle had cost her some fur, and a nail on one toe. But when she woke up, she began eating right away.

Because she was eating for more than one — something Ms. Van Houten noticed immediately after freeing the squirrel, now dubbed “Pretty Momma” by staff. “Usually, they get nicknames, because it’s easier for me to say, ‘Hey, did you check on Pretty Momma today? How’s she doing?’ versus, did you check ‘Squirrel 20-131?’” she explained.

Back to Mr. Rocco, who regularly checks in on the animals he saves. There was no guarantee that the babies would survive the stress their mom had been under.

On March 14, he was out on another call — wouldn’t you know it, another squirrel, this one trapped in a chimney in Flanders. It wasn’t a happy call: Mr. Rocco didn’t arrive in time to save the animal.

“And then I get a text message: ‘I hear you’re a grandfather!’ I’m, like, what are you talking about?”

A Facebook post confirmed it: The staff had discovered that Pretty Momma had delivered three healthy babies, most likely on March 9 or 10.

There still was cause for concern: A stressed mother squirrel can sometimes kill her offspring. But checks on March 22 and then on March 28 found that the babies were fine, and Pretty Momma was also an attentive momma.

“And then when I found out she gave birth, and she’s, like, a really good mom, it made my day,” Mr. Rocco said. “It’s not very often we get a happy ending to a story.” He looks forward to meeting the little ones “as soon as they pop their heads out” of their protective enclosure.

Formerly in construction, he is working toward what he says is a more rewarding career focused on wildlife: “It makes me happy. It makes me very, very happy. It makes you feel like you’re making a difference.” He added, “They do amazing work here at the center.”

The plan is to release the squirrel family back into the neighborhood they came from when the babies are old enough — and the hole in the structure is now safely closed up.

And perhaps Pretty Momma one day will share the same story with her little ones, from a slightly different perspective.