Alberta Rancher Jannet Talbott keeps a close eye on the critters around her and she first noticed a squirrel a while back chomping on seeds and nuts near her ranch northwest of Edmonton.
The squirrel was overly thin and Talbott saw that the squirrel had teeth so overgrown they were curling out of the squirrel’s mouth.
The squirrel, who Talbott dubbed Bucky, was in one of her feeders when the rancher decided to try and catch him.
She was wearing leather gloves as she was working in her garden. She swaddled Bucky in a towel and that’s when she noticed the squirrel’s upper and lower incisors were all overgrown.
“He couldn’t live much longer the way he was because he couldn’t close his mouth. He couldn’t actually chew his food.”
Talbott researched squirrel dentistry, looked up some instructional video and went to work on the small animal with a pair of wire cutters. Squirrels don’t have nerves in their teeth so they can’t feel any pain.
She says Bucky remained totally chill while she worked on him.
“Didn’t squirm. Didn’t move. I do believe animals know when you’re trying to help them.”
Once she let him back outside, he raced up a tree and continually rubbed his cheeks on the bark as if delighted with his new smile.
Talbott posted about the incident on her Facebook page.
She said that the proper tool was needed.
The wire cutters are very sharp, so they cut the tooth opposed to breaking it, which can cause infection in the jaw if it breaks too far down by the nerve. I defiantly wouldn’t have attempted this, if I didn’t do some research first.
