MSNBC’s Hurricane Laura Coverage Derailed After Baby Orphan Squirrel Found in Tree
MSNBC’s coverage of Hurricane Laura was derailed on Thursday after their reporters discovered a baby orphaned squirrel in a toppled tree.
During his on-ground report on the destruction from Hurricane Laura, MSNBC’s Ali Velshi became engrossed by the rescue of the little critter.
“Ali Velshi here in Orange, Texas, just a few miles from the Louisiana border. I was talking to Tony Noah a few moments ago, and he noticed in this tree there’s a baby squirrel,” declared Velshi, as the camera zoomed into the damaged tree trunk.
“There he is, you can see. You may be able to see it, he’s moving around a little bit. I don’t know if he’s injured, he may be sort of caught there, and Tony is trying to sort of nurse it back to energy and see if he needs something and maybe get him some food or some care.”
“It does look like that squirrel’s okay. Look at that. He’s grabbing that squirrel, little baby squirrel, from the tree. He’s got somebody up the road who actually adopted a squirrel at some point. His paws seem to be stuck in some of the debris there,” Velshi continued. “But that’s the kind of thing. It’s not just people, and it’s not just houses and businesses, there’s all sorts of folks who suffered through this hurricane. This tree obviously came down and that squirrel’s mother had nested in that tree.”
“So Tony’s taking care of that, meanwhile we’re taking care of what’s going on across Louisiana, more than Texas,” he concluded, noting, “I’m in Texas, I’m on the eastern part of it, but Louisiana is where most of the damage is done.”
After a few minutes of hurricane coverage, without any mention of the squirrel, Velshi signed off, saying, “I want to send this back to my colleague Kristen Welker, and while you’re doing some stuff, Kristen, I’m going to see if we can nurse this little baby squirrel back to health.”
“Let’s hope you can, Ali, and just incredible coverage there,” Welker replied. “We’re going to check back in with you in just a few moments for an update on the squirrel and everything there, but we do want to get to some other headlines that are happening in our country right now.”
Later on in the show, MSNBC — true to their word — did provide an update on the squirrel, as you can see in the clip above.
“There are silver linings in everything, and over the course of the last hour we’ve been nursing this little guy back to health,” declared Velshi after a commercial break. “Actually, while you weren’t watching me, we gave him some Gatorade, which the Google told me we can do because he needed some electrolytes, and now he’s gone to sleep. He had about a quarter of a cap of it, he’s gone to sleep.”
“I was going to name her Laura after the hurricane, but we’ve determined that it is a ‘he,’ so we’re going to call him Larry,” he revealed.
Watch above via MSNBC.
