“It’s hard to be a human in New York but it’s downright dangerous to be a baby squirrel,” says Kyra Tippens-Richan, who spends her work days performing autopsies on animals and her off-hours caring for squirrels.

“I was in high school and I had a boyfriend at the time. I convinced him to come over to my house: ‘Do you want to feed some baby squirrels?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, of course.’ He’d come into my house with this little carrier full of, like, 10 squirrels on a heating pad. And I’d show him how to syringe feed, and which one he fed by picking it up and seeing if it had milk all over its face. And he wouldn’t tell his mom that we were dating…

Baby squirrels nap. Credit: Courtesy of Kyra Tippens-Richa

“He was just like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna go over to Kira’s house and feed squirrels.’ And he was – he wasn’t lying. He eventually told her. He’s now my husband.”

Kyra Tippens-Richan has been rescuing squirrels. Credit: Courtesy of Kyra Tippens-Richan

Plus, Ben Max s the pod to run down the competitive races down-ballot ahead of the FAQ NYC-Max Politics live podcast all about the mayoral contest along with special guest Kathryn Garcia. That’s happening Thursday at 5:15 at New York Law School in TriBeCa, and is free and open to the public; just RSVP here.