Four happy years after rescuing a baby squirrel, Linda Varisco is overjoyed whenever the critter comes home to visit. The family will just be sitting in their den watching TV, when their squirrel friend, whom they call Mr. Peaches, enters through the open sliding doors to hang out with them.
“He sits on our heads or shoulders and just stays there while we cuddle with him. It’s just amazing—he’s definitely one of a kind,” Ms. Varisco, a retired chiropractor, told The Epoch Times.
This adorable companion came into their lives in 2019 as a tiny baby. The family had just lost someone very close to them and were experiencing a difficult period when the little creature appeared on the deck of their home in Coral Springs, South Florida.
When Ms. Varisco arrived back at the house after being out, her children had picked up the squirrel, holding him in a shirt. It was clear that while the little squirrel wasn’t injured, something had happened to separate him from his mother—perhaps he somehow fell out of the nest, or his mother was killed.
Since the squirrel’s eyes were open, Ms. Varisco estimates that Mr. Peaches was about 4 weeks old. She gave him water using a dropper, and a little feast of avocado, thawed frozen vegetables, shelled almonds—and a peach. “He would hold the piece of peach in his little hand and gnash on it. So that’s how he got the name,” she said, adding that the squirrel had a sense they were helping him.
Mr. Peaches would then fall asleep in their arms, all curled up with his tail covering his body, and never tried to bite, from that day forth. “With an animal, you can tell when they feel safe. And he bonded with us because we found him so young. It’s the cutest little thing,” she said.
At night, Mr. Peaches would bed down on towels in a bottom wicker drawer in the family’s Florida home, safe from predators. During the day, he would run around the screened-in porch, playing with Ms. Varisco and her kids and being fed snacks.
When he got a little older and bigger, Ms. Varisco realized that Mr. Peaches, like all squirrels, wanted to be up high. Her father built him a special pagoda, hanging it from the ceiling, and it became the squirrel’s favorite place. One day, the clever little guy collected pieces of palm to make a circular house for himself inside the pagoda.
“They’re architects, and they do that in the wild,” she said, explaining how clean the creatures are:
“The females, when they have babies in the nest, they stimulate them to urinate and lift them up and out of the nest so it doesn’t get dirty. And another thing ... he smells so good—like a sandalwood smell. You would expect a rodent to be dirty, right? But not at all.”
As well as being very tidy, Mr. Peaches is also an extremely smart and playful little character.
“He really loves to be scratched under his arm. He’ll lift his arm up like saying, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the spot, that’s the spot,’” Ms. Varisco said.
Someone donated a carpeted play tower, designed for cats, to Mr. Peaches, and he would happily lie in it, spread-eagled, to relax. But when another squirrel tried to get into his nest, he was having none of it. “He made all sorts of noise and chased the squirrel away. Like, ‘This is my home. These are my people, my humans. Stay away from it,’” Ms. Varisco said.
One day, the New York native was on a Zoom call when Mr. Peaches came in and climbed up on her shoulder, and the person suggested she should put a video of him on social media.
“I did and it went viral; something like 2.7 million views in a couple of weeks,” Ms. Varisco said.
After about eight months, heartbreak struck when Mr. Peaches chewed a hole in the screen door and left. Missing him, Ms. Varisco searched and searched until a couple of days later when calling his name, the squirrel came back running in. From then on, much to the delight of visiting friends, when she went out in her backyard and called his name, Mr. Peaches would give a squawk and appear.
Now that he’s gotten older, the tame squirrel spends more time out in the wild than at home. But when he does turn up, the family continues to share his antics on their Instagram page, @the_life_of_mr._peaches. His audience adores him.
Ms. Varisco loves animals, and she has helped out other lost baby squirrels as well. She feels like Mr. Peaches picked her family, and is a very lucky squirrel since something could easily have happened to him. His landing with her family has been wonderful for her own emotional health, helping her through troubled times.
“I would just go and sit in my Florida room and play with him,“ she said. ”With the simplicity of nature, a little wild animal and how much they can bond with you, you forget all your worries.
“He became part of the family. I find that if I’m having a bad day, there’s nothing like playing with a squirrel.”
