#I found him crawling on the garage floor covered in dust and dying slowly without his mom

[prurientpuddlejumper]

Welcome to your new home, baby

The husband agreed since he escaped his cage & seemed to be looking for a way out, that we don't have to drive him two miles away & I can just release him out into the garden. There are a lot of pros and cons to the three potential release sites I identified.

Down in the blueberry patch there are alot of blueberries, blackberries, wild black cherries, and a dense protective shrub cover from the sweetferns (which are also mast-producing). But, if he tries to navigate home from there, there's nothing but open lawn & a vigilant Cooper's hawk.

Then there's the narrow strip of trees at the edge of the property which has a ton of piles of wood and leaves for cover... but a ton of chipmunks, moles, and shrews already live there for exactly that reason.

Since he was raised indoors, I released him next to the shed. There's a gap beneath the door wide enough for a mouse to get inside, and I don't mind if mice live in the shed. If natural habitat is more in his instincts, there's a pile of yard scraps too bulky for the compost bins behind it, which I'm pretty sure mice have nested in. There's a nice little forest edge where raspberries and cherries grow, and extensive groundhog burrows under the shed as well. If he tries to navigate home he'll hit the porch and hopefully find convenient shelter under there, as well. He never was a huge fan of the tomatoes I offered him, but the veg garden is right there, too.

I'm leaving his tank for the first few days/weeks until he's found a new place to nest. As soon as he realized there was a way out, he took off exploring the vegetation. Didn't even have time to get my camera ready.

Good luck, buddy.