For all of you who follow Karen’s blog or check out the facebook page Karen Paolillo, or Turgwe Hippo Trust, you should remember Squiggle the slender mongoose.
Squiggle was found by Karen under a log with still her umbilical chord attached and her eyes closed. There was no sign of her mother and no hole that she could have fallen out of, this was in March 2013. Karen brought her home and thanks to advice from Lisa Hywood, of the Tiki Hywood Trust in Zimbabwe, she and Jean-Roger managed to hand rear her.
Feeding her every two hours on a 24 hour basis. Her mother never came back to the log as Karen had left one of the trail cameras to check. The night she found Squiggle, two lions did come along, so even if she had survived until dark she would have been eaten.
She has grown up with the Paolillo’s and the house is her domain alongside an outside huge cage with grass and trees to play on which she can enter from a kind of cat flap in the kitchen. She weighed 50grams when found and now weighs 500grms.
She is very much part of Hippo Haven and has grown up with various rescue cats in the house. This image shows her nictating eyelids.