Your answer
Describe it to a rehabilitator before you decide.
Squirrels, opossums, and animals you cannot identify all turn on details that are hard to judge from a distance — whether the eyes are open, whether the tail is longer than the body, whether an opossum is longer than your hand. A two-minute phone call settles it and costs the animal nothing.
What to do right now
- 01Photograph the animal from a few feet away, including something for scale.
- 02Note whether the eyes are open, whether it moves away from you, and where you found it.
- 03Call a rehabilitator and describe those three things.
- 04If told to contain it, use a ventilated box with a towel — warm, dark, quiet, no food or water.
What not to do
- Do not feed it while you wait.
- Do not move it far from where you found it.
- Do not keep it overnight without instruction.
Change your mind if any of this is true
Any one of these changes the answer above. Call a rehabilitator instead.
- It is cold, limp, wet, or has flies on it — that is an emergency in any species.
- A cat or dog was involved.
Get professional help
Tell us where you are — your state, then your county — and we will list the people licensed to take it there, nearest to you first. Rehabilitators are licensed by their own state, which is why we ask.
Understand the animal
Knowing why this happens is what makes the next one easier to read.