Finnegan, begin again

One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is, “where are the dog and squirrel pictures?”

Sigh.  Okay.  But let me first explain to those who don’t understand.

A few years ago I was sent on a fairly routine assignment.  Less than routine, really.  Somebody had called the newspaper to say that they had a dog that had come to nurse a squirrel that had been sick and abandoned.  That dog had a litter of puppies.  And the wayward squirrel became part of the brood.

We all get those telephone calls, and we all dutifully follow up on them without thinking very much about it.

In this case, the woman who called had a good story to tell.  And she named the squirrel “Finnegan.” 

I photographed the squirrel and puppies, and wrote a short piece about the whole thing, and it earned a full page in the features section of the newspaper.

From there the story took off.  For all the suffering in the world, there’s nothing like a good animal story to get people excited.  Hundreds of emails and telephone calls followed.  Editors from periodicals all around the world called wanting to buy the pictures.  Television producers called wanting the subject’s telephone number so they could do a story of their own.  The pictures that appeared in our online site were quickly pilfered, and began showing up all over the globe.

Among that group my name will forever be associated with Finnegan.  They still write me.

For the record, Finnegan was eventually released into the wild never to be seen again.