Last week, Kailey Chase, a U.S. Postal Service mail carrier, was midway through her usual route when something unusual caught her eye — a small ball of fluff perched on top of a storm drain.
As she got closer, Chase realized it wasn’t just resting there. It was a squirrel, and something was terribly wrong.
“It looked like he [or] she had totally given up,” Chase told The Dodo. “As I got closer, I realized that its tail was stuck in the grate.”
The poor squirrel seemed exhausted, unable to move. Chase’s heart sank — and she knew she couldn’t just walk away.
“At first it tried to squirm around as I came near it,” she said. “That’s when I realized it was really stuck in there, and all I could think was, ‘How in the world did this even happen?’”
Chase, who’s been a mail carrier for nearly a decade, has handled plenty of surprises on her route — but this one was a first.
She quickly slipped off her sweater, hoping to keep the frightened squirrel warm while also protecting herself from his tiny claws.
Then she examined the grate. The only way to free him, she realized, was to lift the heavy cover just enough to push his tail back through.
“I didn’t want to yank on the poor thing and risk hurting it,” she said. “I tried taking a gentle approach, but those grates are super heavy. I was worried that if I moved it too much, it might fall into the hole.”
In a video Chase later shared on Facebook, she’s seen struggling to lift the grate, pausing to think — then spotting a nearby rock.
Using it as a prop, she wedged the grate open just wide enough to reach underneath. With steady hands, she slid her fingers under the squirrel and gently worked his tail free.
The moment he was out, Chase wrapped the trembling little creature in her sweater.
“[He] just snuggled up in my sweater,” she said. “It was so heartwarming.”
After giving him a few minutes to rest, Chase set the squirrel down in a safe spot nearby. He hesitated, then began to scurry off — free at last.
To make sure he was okay, Chase texted a nearby resident to check on the area later. When they looked, the squirrel was gone — likely back to the trees where he belonged.
Though the rescue delayed her route by about 20 minutes, Chase never gave it a second thought.
“Every life matters, big or small,” she wrote in her Facebook post.
