Crediting Compassion

Squirrel found in Angela Campbell's toilet

"Around 5 a.m. the dogs were growling and kind of pacing in the hallway and we couldn't figure out what was bothering them. Then around 7 a.m. I heard what sounded like a bowling ball splashing in a tub. Like it was just very loud and flippy. It must have really been banging itself hard to get out. So then I went in and looked down the toilet and the squirrel was looking right back at me.
"At first I thought it was a rat, because it really did look like a rat when it was wet. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing.
"How am I going to get it out of there? I thought I need something to keep my distance if it wants to bite. So I brought out the barbecue tongs. When I reached inside the toilet and put the little tongs underneath its armpits, it just kind of rested there. It looked happy. It was kind of like, 'Ahh, I don't have to keep trying to swim.' And then I lifted it out and put it into the tub.
"It was really dirty. Like covered in a urine film. It was really sticky and gross. It stank really, really badly. The smell was suffocating. So I rinsed it off with a bucket, just kind of pouring water on. I did make the water lukewarm because it must have been freezing. It wasn't putting up a fight at all or a fuss. It almost seemed to welcome it. It just kind of seemed to surrender."

These are the words of a Winnipeg-area resident who had an unusual experience. Finding a little black squirrel in one's house, let alone in one's toilet does not represent a common occurrence. But Angela Campbell dealt with the experience. She didn't view the tiny creature with repugnance, nor was her impulse to harm, but to aid it to escape from its dreadful fate. She is obviously a calm person, a fast thinker to whom solutions come readily.

She saved the squirrel's life. Managed to get it out of her house so it could resume its life in the trees surrounding the house. She chose not to abandon the helpless creature, but to instinctively come to its assistance, and she did so compassionately, understanding its panic, its fear and its exhaustion. She has theorized that the squirrel somehow entered her home's sewage system through a pipe, and then found itself trapped.

The only thing worse than seeing a squirrel desperately attempting to extricate itself from certain death by drowning in a toilet, is to find a dead, drowned squirrel in a toilet. By her swift action Angela Campbell ensured that this squirrel didn't end up in the latter category. The world needs more Angela Campbells.

And far less of those people who reacted to what she had seen and done by saying, as they did to her: "Ugh, I would have flushed it. I would have stepped on it...They're diseased, they're gross." Her thought was that it was a living creature that did not deserve to have its life ended through casual misadventure. "How could you kill something that ended up there, just because? Why does it deserve to die? Just because it's there and you don't like it and it's ugly and dirty?"

The squirrel was moved to the bathtub to recover. Metro/Angela Campbell

Angela Campbell deserves a medal for doing the obviously right thing. Failing a medal, a congratulatory pat on the back. She is an admirable human being.