I just saved a chipmunk's life.
OK, I will admit, I didn't know whose life I was saving at the time. I have a gutter along my garage that empties into some sealed drain that probably is supposed to run the water out to the street, but it is stopped up with nearly 70 years of whatever. I was sitting on the porch and kept hearing this scratching noise....and after a while, I determined it was coming from this gutter. This thought about rodents, but figured that they could make their way out. This did not seem to be the case with this critter. Hmmm, maybe it was a bird???
It looked like taking the gutter apart would be iffy, and I didn't know how easy it would be to remove it from that drain, or put it back together if I did. So instead of taking drastic measures, I decided to drop a rope down the downspout and maybe, just maybe, that "bird" could climb up. I must have scared the critter shitless, because I heard nothing for over an hour....then all of a sudden I hear the banging around on the spout again, so I watched to see if the rope worked. It did! Lo and behold, out runs a little chipmunk.
I feel good now, I don't have to listen to the scatching and clawing, and I didn't have to disassemble the downspout!
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Good job 
(...sorta). We had a big storm that blew green apples off the trees. We started tossing them over the fence to get them out of the yard, and the cows came up and started eating them. One got a chunk caught in its windpipe and started wheezing and turning blue around the lips, eyes bugging out. All I could think to do was crawl throught the fence, slide under the cow on my back, found about where its diaphragm would be, and just started shoving against that spot with my hands. In about a minute, the cow heaved up the apple chunk and started breathing again.
It never did thank me--the ungrateful beast......
Nice story.
Excellent work. I am firmly convinced the reason we humans have big brains is to figure out how to help every other creature on this planet thrive (we haven't done a great job of it so far, but still - there are those, like yourself, who are willing and able).
Maybe Theodore was in the background somewhere giggling at Alvin's predicament 
and she was baking a cake in a bundt pan. When she went to put it on a plate, it split and left a huge chunk clinging to the side and top of the pan. She was so upset thinking that she would have to bake another cake to take to a party. I asked her if she had a flexible spatula and I slowly worked all around it, then got it out in one piece and it fit perfectly in place on the cake. You couldn't even tell it was in two pieces.
She was very grateful. I don't think she believed it would work.
Poor little thing, and you certainly saved his life! Thanks for sharing this with us... Kudos! 
Frozen in fear, it took a while to listen and sense the thing that slithered in to the darkness wasn't alive... tentatively approached, touched it, and realized it could be like a vine to climb up and out. 
Your kind deed made me think of this picture book I have-
http://www.amazon.com/Animalia-Helen-Barbara-Berger/dp/0890875081
Set a long branch against the wall of the trench so it could climb out.
can stand to see an animal in distress----and probably in a deadly situation. Your idea was a good one----possums can be scary. I went to chase one away from the bird feeder and it just stood there and hissed at me. 
