“Hamilton the Squirrel” eats a potato chip while sitting on his adoptive caretaker, John Colwell of North Buffalo Township.
by Olivia Wasilko
John and Rose Colwell of North Buffalo Township have recently welcomed a new member of the family to their yard: a young, orphaned gray squirrel they named Hamilton.
Most of John’s friends know that he’s always had a knack for wildlife. When they discovered the motherless baby squirrel, they called him and asked if he would take it in.
“He came from Armsdale. They named him out where they found him. His mother got killed on the road so we kind of adopted him and brought him in here,” John explained.
Rose believes Hamilton sees John as his father. From the first day they met, he seemed to have a special connection with Hamilton.
“I think he sees John as his parent. A surrogate parent, maybe. He’s the one that babies him, and takes care of him, and holds him. When I’m not here I think he lets him in the house, actually. The thing is, John was the one who took him out and was holding him and loving him. I think maybe he got his scent and just imprinted on him,” Rose said. “The very first day he came out, he crawled up in his coat and laid by his arm for two days. He just laid around and played and would sneak out and we would just let him run. And now every day, like clockwork, he comes down and knocks with his foot on the door and wants John to come out and feed him. He’s been feeding him potato chips, and now he wants Cheesies!”
She went on to say that Hamilton’s daily routine starts with John letting him in the house to get his breakfast.
“Every morning, every single morning, he’s down here to eat. You never know what time it’ll be. It’s usually from 7 to 8:30. So we let him in as far as the living room and he’ll eat his chips and his peanuts there, but he doesn’t get his Cheesies. He makes an awful mess. So he’s a little bit domesticated. A sort of house squirrel. If it was up to John, I know he’d be in there all the time, but not for me.”
Rose Colwell feeds “Hamilton the Squirrel” Cheesies on their picnic table. Hamilton came to the Colwells after his mother was killed by a driver along Route 85 in Rayburn Township. He joins approximately a dozen other squirrels, but is definitely the spoiled favorite of John and Rose.
But John isn’t the only one who spoils his pet. While Hamilton was still getting settled into his new home, Rose suggested that they build him a temporary nest in case the other squirrels would not befriend him.
“We took a big log, hollowed it out, put a little blanket in it, and set it out so he could go in and out and he laid in there for a day or two. Then he built a nest up in the tree with the rest of the critters.”
When asked what Hamilton was going to do in the cold winter months, however, John said he wasn’t going to baby him.
“He’ll survive. He’s a squirrel. He’ll live outside with the rest of the squirrels. They all stay out here all winter long. I feed them all through the year. And he’s already got his own nest up in the tree where he sleeps.”
One of the Colwells’ top priorities is keeping their forest friends happy, and it doesn’t come cheap.
“I spend more money, I think, on food for squirrels and birds, than I do on myself,” Rose joked. Every day she throws feed for the birds and squirrels that inhabit her backyard. Although Hamilton is the most pampered of her pets, she says that he occasionally enjoys eating seeds with his fellow squirrels.
“He doesn’t particularly care for the corn but he likes the sunflower seeds. He likes pizza, too. Not so much the pizza sauce, but you give him the crust, (and this is comical) we give him the crust and he took it in his hands and held it like you were going to take it away from him. He wrapped his little body it and was chewing on it. But he sure likes his Cheesies now, much better than potato chips. He loves his Cheesies!”
John Colwell spends lots of time in his wood shop fashioning bird houses and nesting boxes of all sizes, types, and colors.
While the Colwells have familiarized themselves with the squirrels, they also let them live their lives as they would in nature. To legally own a wild animal in Pennsylvania, a private party must apply for and be approved to have a license. The animals are part of the family, they explained, but they are also wild. In addition to being provided with extra food, all of the animals have their own wooden homes to sleep in at night: brightly painted decorative boxes that John makes himself.
“There must be a hundred or so,” John thought.
Hamilton also enjoys playing with the other wild animals. “The blue jays scare him when they come flying down, and he’ll jump, but he’s getting kind of used to that. As far as the other squirrels and birds, he plays right with them,” said Rose. He has even gotten some of his other squirrel friends to eat from John’s hands.
And all of the animals enjoy drinking from Rose’s koi fish pond. Because some of the store-bought feed they eat usually has a higher sodium content than an otherwise natural diet, the squirrels often perch along the stone wall of the water to quench their thirst. Some even like to let the small, electricity-powered waterfall run over their faces on hot days. A few times, the squirrels have fallen in the water.
Squirrels play near the waterfall that the Colwells have in their backyard. John said squirrels hate it if they accidentally fall into the water.
“They don’t like to get wet. When a squirrel gets wet, that bothers them. When he fell into the water, he scoots along right here to get his belly dry,” Rose said as she pointed to a sunny spot on her porch.
When the other squirrels get wet, they sometimes hang upside-down from the trees with their paws spread wide out and sun themselves until they are dry. Rose will often give Hamilton a chip when he’s drying. “He’ll put his paws out and he’ll want you to come over and give him the Cheesies or the chips. He doesn’t want to have to come over here and get it. He wants you to go over there and feed him.”
“He’s like a cat,” John added. “He’ll come when he feels like it.”
And though Hamilton was aloof to humans at first, every trace of his former shyness seems to have disappeared over the weeks he has spent with the Colwells. He may be a squirrel, but every day he comes back to his human family.
“He’s part of the family, no doubt,” Rose said fondly of her newly-adopted pet. “There’s absolutely no doubt about that.”
John Colwell has created more than 100 bird houses. Many of them are displayed on “Bird House Row” - a fence in his yard designed specifically to be homes for various types of feathered creatures.