During a scorching Texas summer, Breyana Elwell and her husband spent a rare, cooler evening relaxing on their front porch. To keep bugs away, they set up an electric fan and let it run through the night.
“The next day, I went outside with my toddler to play on the patio,” Elwell told The Dodo. “I turned the fan back on — and then completely forgot to shut it off when we went inside.”
That small oversight didn’t go unnoticed.
“About an hour later, I looked outside and saw a squirrel splooting right in front of the fan, soaking up the breeze,” Elwell said.
Splooting — when an animal stretches out flat to cool down — is common during extreme heat, and Elwell couldn’t help but feel for the furry visitor.
“It was adorable, but I also felt really empathetic,” she said. “It was such a brutally hot summer, and we were in the middle of a drought.”
Instead of reclaiming the fan, Elwell decided to help. She set out additional fans so more squirrels could cool off and added bowls of water and snacks to keep them hydrated and fed.
What surprised her most was how quickly her feelings changed. Elwell admits she’d never been a big fan of squirrels before.
“They’re basically rats with fancy tails,” she joked.
But watching them seek relief on her porch softened her heart — and sparked something bigger.
“We accidentally created a whole squirrel resort,” Elwell said. “We have multiple fans, water stations, and even built them a ‘catwalk’ through the trees.”
Now, the neighborhood squirrels enjoy a shaded, breezy retreat during Texas’s toughest weather. Thanks to one forgotten fan, they’re cooler, safer and very well cared for — and Elwell’s porch has become their favorite summer getaway.
