Hey everyone! New to the sub and I wanted your advice.

Since this fall my roommate and I have been sort of giving handouts to a squirrel (and sometimes its family) every now and then. The rest of the family doesn't show up very often, but the same squirrel (as far as we can tell) comes every morning. He pretty much lost its fear of us, eats from our hand and doesn't mind venturing inside the house if we leave the door open - though it stays close to the door, doesn't go very far in.

Anyway, I just want to make sure it's okay for the squirrel. We love having it around because we're technically not allowed pets and while it's not a cat or anything, it's still nice to see some animals every now and then. So of course we'd like to keep it around, but we want to make sure that our handouts won't cause more harm than good.

We have no plans to cage the squirrel, but while we have a bag of nuts on the ready to give to it, will it cause the squirrel to become too reliant on us? Is it dangerous for it if we feed it too much, or not enough?

Also, we live in Canada and it's pretty cold out there. If it's not a bad idea, can we give it some sort of shelter? Maybe a blanket so it can keep warm?

Thanks!