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The question How can one care for a squirrel who got bitten by a cat? was closed with reason "squirrels aren't lets". I don't understand: I used to have a squirrel as a pet, many others do the same, many shops sell pet squirrels, and Wikipedia lists rodents as common pets. Why are squirrels declared as non-pets on this website?

Note that there have been questions about squirrels in the past that were well received, e.g.: How to help an infant palm squirrel that is not drinking milk and seems like it's suffocating

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    The squirrel in question was not a pet, that's why I personally voted to close.
    – SerenaT
    Commented Mar 4, 2022 at 6:30
  • @SerenaT thanks, it was on their property, the parents are their pets and the baby squirrel (less than a month old) was meant to be a new pet. It wasn't found randomly walking in a public forest. Also that baby squirrel is dead anyway: the main point of the question is if that happens again, likely with another pet squirrel (wild squirrels are much less likely to be bitten by a cat than a pet squirrel, since there aren't typically cats in the forest).
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Mar 4, 2022 at 6:38
  • @FranckDernoncourt it is off topic because it is illegal to keep squirrels as pets in most of the US states and in most of the countries in europe squirrelenthusiast.com/can-you-keep-a-squirrel-as-a-pet
    – trond hansen
    Commented Mar 5, 2022 at 13:18
  • @trondhansen it's legal where my friend lives. Over 80% of countries are neither the US nor in Europe.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Mar 5, 2022 at 19:01

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According to the rules of the Stack Exchange network, of which Pets is only a small part, we have to declare an objective scope for our site. We declared our scope to be only pets, and by that we mean "an animal companion that is cared for in a domestic setting and not livestock, wildlife, and pests in and around your home".

We are aware that there's a big grey area around that definition. Pidgeons, rats or rabbits can be kept as pets or they can be wild animals in many rural or urban areas. Tigers, chimpanses or aligators are usually considered wild animals, but some people still keep them as pets. To stay objective in our scope we usually only consider animals as pets when they where born in captivity (bred and sold as pets), lived so long with humans that their behavior matches that of a pet more than that of a wild animal, or if a captured wild individual is docile enoug to be considered a pet (like a bunny, fish or snail).

Ultimately, the reason for narrowing the scope is to keep this site as useful as possible. The variety in pets is already so big that we're unable to answer all questions asked here. The variety in wildlife is even bigger and we wouldn't be able to answer many of them. Answers concerning wildlife are also much more probable to differ depending on the locale of the person asking the question.

In the end, we are a self-regulating community consisting of many individual people who have different oppinions, so some questions in that grey area might stay open while others are closed.

Even if this question was not about a wild animal, closing it would have been appropriate. The help page states:

Emergency medical situations may be accepted on this site provided one or more of these conditions may be met:

  • There are potential emergency measures that may need to be taken care of prior to bringing to the vet.
  • There is no possible way to seek professional veterinary care at this time.
  • The situation is, ultimately, preventable and that it is possible to provide some advice on avoiding the situation in the future.

You stated in your question that there was no vet available, but without knowing the state of the animal (are there fractured bones, internal injuries or other trauma?) we are unable to give you more than the most rudimentary advice like "keep it warm" and "try feeding and/or hydrating it".

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  • Thanks, the parents were bred and sold as pets, and a baby squirrel is docile enough to be considered a pet. Could you please reopen the question since it fits your criteria?
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Mar 4, 2022 at 19:01
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    To be honest, even if I reopen your question the only viable answer is probably "go see a vet". There really isn't much else to do. We cannot give you any reasonable self-help advice without examining the animal, which is another close reason BTW. Also the very first sentence of your question reads very much like this was a wild animal.
    – Elmy Mod
    Commented Mar 4, 2022 at 19:22
  • I was hoping an answer would contain the basics such as: to what extent should we try to feed and find water to the animal? Should we try to bandage or do anything else if any wound? Should we immobilize any part we suspect is broken? How can we check for internal trauma? Etc. In the first sentence, they have a tree in their garden where the squirrels have their nest.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Mar 4, 2022 at 19:37
  • @FranckDernoncourt May I suggest editing your question and concentrating on exactly those questions? As it is, your question contains too little information for us to give any meaningful answer, but asking for specific first aid measures could be general enough to apply to pets as well as wild animals. (Personally I still think your chances of getting a satisfactory answer are low.) You should still be able to edit your question (though only once), which automatically adds it to the reopen queue.
    – Elmy Mod
    Commented Mar 4, 2022 at 19:48
  • Thanks, I've edited the question accordingly.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Mar 4, 2022 at 22:06
  • Maybe it would also be a smart thought to split it into the three questions: How to handle wounds? How to handle maybe broken bones? How to handle inner injuries? All with the further plan to see a vet, but to get the animal even to the vet...
    – Allerleirauh
    Commented Mar 18, 2022 at 19:20

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