Unlikely Friendships : 47 Remarkable Stories From the Animal Kingdom (19 page)

Finnegan fell. It was a forty-foot tumble from his family nest high in the tree, yet somehow the tiny squirrel survived the landing. His future, which looked pretty bleak on the way down, turned brighter when a woman found him squealing at the base of the trunk. She took him to an animal-loving friend for a little TLC.

That friend was Debby Cantlon, a woman who was constantly caring for wildlife in need—injured raccoons, abandoned kittens, any creature down on his luck. She took the tiny smudge of an animal in, gave him a name, warmed him up and bottle-fed him, then tucked him into a bed of heated blankets on the floor of her dogs' unused kennel.

Her papillon Mademoiselle Giselle, meanwhile, was round with pups. And perhaps because of her impending motherhood, the dog was oddly drawn to the unfamiliar squirming creature her owner had brought home. “I went on an errand,” Debby recalls, “and when I got back, the kennel was empty.” Turns out “Maddie,” as Debby calls her, had pulled the swaddled squirrel through the dining room, down the hall, into the bedroom, and parked it next to her own bed. “She was there, guarding that squirrel like it was her own.”

Once Maddie gave birth, Debby expected the dog's fascination with the squirrel to fade. Instead, her motherly need to be near the animal got stronger. She went looking for the squirrel just a day after her own pups were born. When Debby gave in and moved Finnegan into Maddie's bed with the puppies, “Maddie started licking, just licking his little head. She was beaming, as if she felt whole now that all her babies were together. I think that a mother is always a mother. Those nurturing instincts are there even if the little one isn't your own.”

As the puppies grew bigger and stronger than Finnegan, Debby began putting the squirrel outside so he could learn about the wild life she hoped he'd return to. Maddie would watch and wait for the squirrel to come back to the fold.
Just around dusk, Finnegan would return to the house, scratch at the door, then nose-dive into the pack and roll around with the dogs. “It was like he was telling them all about his adventures of the day,” Debby recalls.

Eventually Finnegan returned to being a wild squirrel full time. When he stopped coming back, “I was sad, for me and for Maddie,” Debby says. “But our job was done.”

{A
NTARCTICA,
2005}

There is a saying that loving an animal awakens the human spirit. For Canadian photographer Paul Nicklen, just a brief encounter with one wild beast not only roused his soul but set it dancing. While on assignment for
National Geographic
magazine, Paul suited up in dive gear and entered the cold blue world of the leopard seal to document these magnificent, and sometimes fierce, marine mammals beneath the Antarctic ice. His goal was simple: Shoot as many photos as possible without being attacked by the thousand-pound territorial beasts, any one of which could easily kill him.

Historical writings by Antarctic explorers include mention of these massive seals threatening men, sometimes following their
movements along ice floes, even trying to grab them. And in 2003, a leopard seal that may have been starving attacked a scientist and drowned her.

The animals' ill-repute makes Paul's experience that much more astounding. A twelve-foot female leopard seal not only took a liking to the interloper, she made efforts to nourish him.

She began the encounter by flashing Paul her wide-open jaws, a threat display that let him know his place without harming him. Then, her dominance established, the seal's mood seemed to swing in Paul's favor. She hovered near him in the water, swimming within arm's reach, as if posing for the camera. In a most astonishing move, the seal hunted down and killed a penguin—its own prey—then offered it to Paul repeatedly, as if trying to feed one of her own young. “It seemed that she was worried about my health. I was clearly too slow a predator to take care of myself,” Paul recalls. When the photographer ignored the food offering (always wary of interacting with any wild animal more than necessary), “she brought me live penguins and would place them on my camera dome, then retrieve them for me when they escaped, blowing bubbles in my face as if exasperated by my passive nature.” Finally, she ate penguins in front of Paul, “showing me how it's done.”

Her sleek beauty amazed Paul. The deadly power turned
tender took his breath away. “My heart was pounding and I was elated every time she'd approach. It was the most remarkable interaction I've ever had,” he says.

Over the course of several days, this wild creature that dwarfed him in size and strength became a human photographer's greatest companion. At the end of the shoot, “it was hard to leave her behind,” he says. “I'd experienced something unique and magical that I'd never forget.”

{T
EXAS,
U.S.A., 2009}