Many people have had their fair share of pets in life, whether that’s a dog, a cat or some other animal; but for sophomore Faith Fuller and her family, their ideal pets are a little more interesting. Opposed to the regular house cat or dog, they have taken on a variety of unique pets throughout their lives, such as multiple squirrels and a bat. 

“I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn how to like take care of those kinds of animals, and yeah, it was basically just because we wanted to try something new,” Fatih said.

Faith’s family first managed to obtain a squirrel about six years ago from people who were cutting down trees by their neighborhood pool. Since the tree cutters usually came across squirrels, they ended up hand raising them sometimes and told Faith’s family that they made good pets from their experiences. After hearing this, her mother, Sarah Fuller, brought home a gray squirrel, which she named Sandy. She then began to raise the squirrel in her own home with the help of Faith, and Faith’s brother, Luke.

“The tree guys said they were an amazing pet if you hand raise them, they’re like dogs,” Sarah said. “Very loving and let you handle them, hand feed them, just snuggle them at night when they were little.”

After raising Sandy, Faith and her family eventually adopted other squirrels, such as Ginger and Juno. Since they had multiple squirrels at once, they had their own ways of telling them apart, which was from their different fur patterns, and personalities. The squirrels at first were kept in cages and fed puppy milk multiple times a day from syringes as a good replacement for milk they would traditionally get from their mother. But they were also frequently let out of their cages to run around the house, to which they went wild. 

“The squirrels were like really crazy and twitchy like squirrels normally are, so any little sound would set them off and they would start running around the house,” Faith said. 

Once the squirrels are fully raised, they are let out to live outside, but still continuously come back to the house for food such as nuts. At the moment, Faith has three squirrels, Chip and Dale, which are brothers, and Moon, who all come to their deck to get tasty treats once in a while. 

“Whenever they were big and going around on our deck, we put out almonds or any type of nut that they liked,” Luke said. 

As for Faith’s bat, he was picked up off of Main Street, St. Charles three years ago by Faith herself who named him Gulmour after the specific street she found him on. He was extremely small, a blackish-brown color, and was fed goat’s milk from a syringe for a bat milk substitute. 

“With the bat, I mean it depends on the mom for a while so we fed it goat milk, and it just, you know, had an attachment to us,” Sarah said.

Gulmour was kept in a terrarium with a screen which made him able to hang upside down when he chose to. He also tended to hang on the front of Faith’s shirt a lot simply because he wanted to be close to Faith at all times. Unfortunately though, he didn’t last long. Gulmour already had something wrong with him when he was picked up off of Main Street and passed away 11 weeks later. 

“[Gulmour] lived for 11 weeks,” Faith said. “Which was a really long time for the condition he was in.”

With all the time, effort, and sometimes destruction, these pets take to raise, the Fuller family doesn’t recommend these animals. It takes certain types of people, such as those who have a lot of spare time, to raise and take care of these pets from a young age. 

“It’s a lot of sacrifice coming in and out of the house, taking care of pets that aren’t like normal house pets. Yeah, I mean, they’re fun, but you just have to be willing to sacrifice all your time.” Sarah said.