Last week, U.S. Postal Service mail carrier Kailey Chase was making her usual rounds when she spotted something unusual on the sidewalk — a small, motionless ball of fur perched atop a storm grate.
Curious, Chase approached and realized the “ball of fluff” was a squirrel — and his tail was trapped between the metal bars.
“As I got closer, I realized that it was stuck in the grate,” Chase told The Dodo. “It looked like he [or she] had totally given up.”
The exhausted animal barely moved, but Chase knew she couldn’t just walk away. She took off her sweater to protect both herself and the squirrel, determined to set the little creature free.
“I didn’t want to yank on the poor thing and risk hurting it,” she said. “I tried taking a gentle approach, but those grates are super heavy, and I was worried it might fall if I moved it too much.”
Thinking quickly, Chase used a nearby rock to prop open the grate and carefully slid her hand underneath the squirrel, gently pushing its tail back through to safety.
As soon as the animal was free, Chase wrapped him in her sweater to help him recover.
“[He] just snuggled up in my sweater,” she recalled. “It was so heartwarming.”
After a short rest, Chase placed the squirrel on the ground and contacted a nearby resident to check on him later. By the time they looked, the little one had disappeared — likely back to the trees where he belonged.
Though the impromptu rescue delayed her route by about 20 minutes, Chase didn’t think twice.
As she later wrote on Facebook, “Every life matters, big or small.”