Koki Balboa - King of the Squirrel Forest

The story of squirrels often brings a smile to our faces, but among them, one squirrel has particularly captured our hearts - Koki. The first squirrel my husband and I befriended in Poreč was Koki. While each squirrel has its uniqueness, Koki became our true favorite. Our first encounter with him was like meeting an old friend, filled with love at the first peanut.

Playful and Cheerful

Koki is a squirrel with many talents. He is a circus performer and a comedian, often making us laugh until we cry. Sometimes, he surprises tourists by climbing up their legs in search of food.

Koki is the alpha squirrel, the true little ruler of the Squirrel Forest, always showing his subjects their place in the hierarchy. His jealous nature comes to the fore, as he reluctantly allows other squirrels to approach us. Sometimes he gets angry with us, especially if we play with another squirrel in front of him. Other times, he sulks and ignores us for a while. Although he eventually had to accept that we love other squirrels too, he clearly shows that he doesn’t like it. He loves being the main and only one.

More Than Just a Wild Animal

Koki feels so natural around us that it sometimes seems like he is more of a forest pet than a wild animal. We occasionally walk with him throughout the peninsula at Plava Laguna. He walks beside us like a faithful puppy, and sometimes we carry him in our arms while he peacefully grinds walnuts with his sharp and strong teeth, like a small living nutcracker.

In fact, upon reflection, it's correct to say that he walks us. He has trained us, his human beings, to bring him food every day and protect him from crows, seagulls, and other predators. He even taught us to shield him with an umbrella when it rains!

The Eco-Conscious Koki

In jest, we say that Koki is an environmentally conscious forester in his spare time because he loves burying hazelnuts, almonds, and walnuts. Naturally, he keeps a part for his winter stash.

Koki's Struggles

Our Koki behaves like a true diva because, unlike other squirrels who patiently wait for food, he demands it immediately. As an alpha squirrel, he often gets into fights and even gets beaten up. Twice in just a few months, he was seriously injured, earning him the nickname Koki Balboa after a six-month recovery period.

Once, we found him with a partially closed left eye, which we assume was injured in a crow or dog attack. The next day, he looked worse, and progressively worse over the following days. We followed the vet’s advice not to transport him to the clinic, as such a sudden change of environment for an injured adult animal could cause shock and death.

We couldn’t give him antibiotics, so we sprayed the wound daily with colloidal silver, hoping for the best.

The additional problem was that the wound was on his head, near the eye. Since squirrels use their foreheads to tamp down the earth when burying their stash, the wound kept getting infected and wouldn’t heal. It even became abscessed.

Finally, after a month, a scab formed. It would fall off and reappear, making Koki look quite frightening with a hole in his head. It took a total of seven months for the wound to stop festering and finally heal with the arrival of spring. The new summer fur covered the hole, and Koki looked like other squirrels again!

Another Injury!

After healing and fully recovering, he didn't have much time to enjoy free running and fooling around: he suffered an even more severe injury, this time to his right leg and paw, which he could hardly use. He limped unsteadily, obviously in great pain. He couldn’t flee or defend himself from attacks by other squirrels, dogs, seagulls, and crows, nor could he dig up food from his caches. At that moment, his life was in danger, and we realized that the future of this little creature depended almost entirely on us.

What to Do?

The vet advised us to remove Koki from that stressful and dangerous environment and take him home until he recovered enough for independent life. We got a cat carrier with the intention of doing just that. Koki entered it several times, but each time we changed our minds at the last moment.

We visited several times a day, sometimes at 4 a.m., to feed and water him safely. The poor thing hid high in the trees, and over time, we established rituals for safe meetings. He would wait until we reached the restaurant, then struggle and descend painfully down the tree to eat the ground-up dry food we prepared for him. Then, he would slowly go to "his" gutter to drink water before starting the arduous climb up the tree, always under our watch.

While one of us fed Koki, the other kept the other squirrels at a safe distance from him. We had to constantly guard and watch over him. He clearly felt safe, as he would sometimes even enter the carrier and eat there. We only had to close the carrier and take him home. But each time, we wondered if it would help or harm him. Would he, trapped in the carrier, think we were helping or experience shock from captivity?

We decided to protect him for as long as necessary, and it turned out to be the right choice. We firmly decided to take him home only if he reached old age and infirmity when he lost his title as the alpha male in the Squirrel Forest.

Recovery!

A month later, the swelling subsided, and Koki started putting weight on his leg. The toes on his paw were still swollen and very painful, but our squirrel was feeling better. And he looked better too.

One day, when I arrived at our spot, he simply came down from the tree, climbed onto my palm, and started eating. At that moment, I knew Koki would be fine. He began greeting us in the usual way, socializing with other squirrels again, running after passersby, and burying food in his cache.

True, he was still significantly slower than other squirrels for another month, but it didn’t stop him from chasing after his love, the squirrel Vjeka. Despite the law of the forest stating that she should have offspring with the strongest and fastest squirrel, she patiently and faithfully waited for him. She didn’t mind that Koki was slower this time, nor that he had previously had children with other squirrels. The two of them were always together; she was his love and constant companion.

Koki is our hero!

A Sad Ending

Unfortunately, Koki’s story has a sad ending. A year ago, on September 21, 2022, Koki disappeared - how he died, we do not know. His sudden departure left a void in our hearts. We remember him with warmth and gratitude for enriching our lives with his presence.

Koki Balboa, probably the most famous squirrel of Poreč, will forever remain in our memories as a symbol of courage, joy, and connection with the wild world. Although he has left us, his spirit lives on through his children and the memories we will always carry with us.