Crawfish
Crawfish's rescue was quite remarkable for the amazing way in which this one-and-a-half-year-old tabby boy managed to escape and rescue himself. He had been stuck in a Sweet Gum tree in the wooded area behind his house in Watson, Louisiana for three nights, and he was afraid of me when I climbed up into the tree with him. I tried to reassure him, and at one point, he sounded and appeared a bit more relaxed, but I should have spent more time with him to reassure him before struggling to get myself closer to him. By the time I was close to him, I looked up to see his terrified face (second picture below) as he decided it was time to escape. I'm glad he decided to go down instead of up, but what he did is something I have never seen before and didn't think possible. He had perched on the limb where it turned vertical, and below him it curved almost to horizontal before angling steeply down toward the trunk of the tree. In true crawfish fashion, Crawfish pushed himself backward off the vertical part of the stem around to the underside of the limb where it became horizontal. It is a little difficult to see in the video (below), but he was actually hanging upside down on the underside of the limb by his two front paws while his back feet were dangling loosely in the air below him. He managed to swing his lower legs back up to the limb while he also somehow managed to walk his front paws along the limb under me and back toward the trunk of the tree. I was sure that he was going to fall, but he managed to hang on even as his back legs dangled loosely below him a few more times as he worked his way down the angled part of the limb all the way to the trunk. Once he reached the trunk, he paused before continuing down the trunk in proper backwards fashion. About halfway down the trunk, he stalled and seemed distressed about how to continue. I could not see how he eventually continued all the way down to the ground, but the owner confirmed that he was all the way down and probably hiding in the woods. I thought he would wait for me to leave before he went home, but as I was packing up, I could hear him crying at their door to go inside. They let him in, and this acrobatic boy is safe inside again far away from the terrifying man in the tree.
