Pool repairman heroically revives drowned squirrel

A pool repairman in turned into a wildlife lifeguard when he saved a drowning squirrel from a Phoenix, Arizona, swimming pool.

Rick Gruber went to a home to install a pool heater when he heard splashing behind him. He turned to find a squirrel furiously trying to keep its head above water in the pool. Returning from his truck with some PVC tubing to rescue the critter, he found it submerged.

"I noticed he was swimming around and struggling to get out," Gruber said in the comments area of the video. "By the time I got back to the yard from my truck to try to fish him out he had stopped swimming and was floating upside down and not moving. His head was under water and he wasn't breathing."

Gruber pulled the animal out of the water and started recording with his cellphone.

He tried gently pushing on the squirrel's stomach to clear its lungs, and rested it on the PVC in hopes it would cough up the pool water.

“Can you throw up? Can you give it a heave ho? Give it the old ughhhhh,” he said.

With the squirrel weak from swimming, pale from the chlorinated water and clearly still struggling with water in its lungs, Gruber gently placed it in one of his kneepads, petting and coaxing it to take deep breaths.

The squirrel twitched and slowly began to recover. It flipped back on its feet to get its bearings.

“There you go. C’mon,” Gruber coaxed.

Weak but conscious, the squirrel was soon strong enough to leave the safety of the pad and look for an escape route. The video ends with the squirrel scurrying off into nearby brush.

“I would do it for anybody: a rodent, a dog, a cat, anything,” Gruber told CNN.

"I did what any human should do when someone is in need of help. I just hope that maybe people will stop to appreciate the small things that make the planet go around too and not forget we are all riding the same spinning ball. Let's keep it going and ride it out together without hate and drama."