GALION — Bill Sells is “nuts” about squirrels.
He’s known for his love of the nut-chomping critters, which he has been raising and rehabilitating for 11 years, now. They’re his passion, and they get plenty of double-takes clinging to his shoulders on routine errands or bike rides around town.
Sells is “The Squirrel Man.”
“It’s like having a kid that goes through growth in around six months as opposed to 18 years,” said the 71-year-old Sells, a former ER nurse at Galion Community Hospital. “They just have a way of really endearing themselves to you.”
Sells and his wife, Paula, have raised – and then released – about 60 squirrels in all. Black squirrels. North American species. And even tiny flying squirrels. But “Lucky,” the Eastern Gray that first captivated their hearts, has become a permanent part of their family.
“Whenever I show up at the post office without her, it’s never, ‘Hi Bill, how are you?’ It’s always, ‘Where’s Lucky?” Sells said of the goodwill ambassador who lives in their living room. “And at Wolf Hardware uptown, they keep pine nut treats under the counter for her.”
Sells found Lucky, who is legally blind, on March 17, 2008 when he got up after working a night shift at the hospital. He noticed three crows from an upstairs window, hovering around a leaf nest near his trailer. They had ravaged the nest and devoured the babies.
But then, he spotted a shadow in the snow. A tiny miracle. “I found a little naked newborn half frozen. She was blue and wasn’t breathing,” Sells recalled. “I brought her into the house to show Paula and was going to bury her.”
Instead, Paula quickly heated up a rice bag and Sells started CPR on the lifeless creature. After a 10-minute cycle of CPR, the little squirrel – wrapped in a tanned rabbit skin and warmed by the rice bag – began to move and breathe.
Lucky had a home. And the couple had adopted their first squirrel.
The Sells researched what to feed baby squirrels and, after a yolk-based formula caused a reaction on Lucky, settled on a scalded milk-heavy whipping cream formula. They kept her in a small box at first, with a heat light attached. She eventually graduated to an old ferret cage and a diet that included kale, pecans, avocados and vitamin water.
One day a pair of bushy-tailed gray squirrels also found their way to the Sells’ Gill Avenue home. Sells said they were starving, and speculated that they, too, had lost their mother. The couple took them in, fed them with a tiny syringe and nurtured them back to health.
All the squirrels they rescue eventually are placed in a release cage that Sells built out back. The wooden structure, complete with tree branches and nesting boxes, has a platform leading to an oak tree. They climb the tree by day, sleep in the cage at night.
“When you raise them inside, they’re terrified outside so we do a soft release first and take them out on the porch,” Sells explained. “Some of them, when they’re released, they’re gone right away and others, like this spring Eeney, Meeney and Miney, they come back.”
The couple name most of their squirrels after characters in old TV shows – “Laverne and Shirley,” “Amos and Andy” and “Ozzie and Harriet” to name a few. But Mr. Twister was the perfect name for a Red squirrel they rehabbed after it survived a tornado that ripped through Crestline two years ago.
Mr. Twister’s mother died in that devastating storm, but he was discovered by a friend on his garage floor, desperately looking for food and suffering from pneumonia. Sells gave it coconut oil and, always the nurse, administered breathing treatments with a nebulizer.
Sells retired in 2014, and since then has devoted his time to anything “squirrely.” He has launched www.SquirrelNutrition.com, a business to promote his line of nutritional products and give rehabilitation advice. He totes Lucky, his constant companion, to squirrel talks at Lowe-Volk Park.
Because the father of four definitely is a squirrel advocate. And that’s by pure “luck.”