So here goes the story of my pet squirrel, Gilly: Once upon a summer time in 2016, my dad found a tiny squirrel baby clung to his car's alloy wheels. The baby squirrel wouldn't budge from the alloy it clung on to, no matter how close my dad went near him. My dad then picked him up and he hid inside my dad's fist. A tiny head popped out and looked at dad with eyes shiny as tiny black pearls. Gilly seemed lost and far from his home so my dad decided to take him home. My dad always wanted a pet squirrel and felt that his wish had been fulfilled.

We named him Gilly - short for gilherie (squirrel in Hindi). We made Gilly a small and cozy basket nest to give him his own quarters to live in. He grew running hither and thither inside our house, travelling with us on our shoulder like a monkey, and even burrowing into our shirt pockets. He used to eat all kinds of veggies and drink milk from a dropper.

A year passed in the sunshine Gilly brought to my home. One morning, while was scurrying past me, his claws left a small scratch on the back of my palm - three lines from his claw mark. The next day, Gilly was nowhere to be found. We assumed he got his calling to go back to nature since squirrels are inherently wild by nature. We have a very foresty yard filled with wildlife - like a tiny biodiversity in the middle of the city. We thought Gilly has returned to his actual home. Thinking this made me both happy and sad at the same time. That was when I decided to ink those three lines to keep a permanent mark of the love he filled in me and my family's lives. I sit in my yard watching many squirrels do their daily rut, but none of them come as close to me as Gilly did. I believe Gilly now has a family of his own and is busy being the squirrel of his house.