PHOTOS: 'Miracle' puppies and an amazing tale of survival in Salinas.

Three puppies have been saved after a semi-miraculous survival saga in Salinas. And that's not the best part of the story.

Last Wednesday, Feb. 24, The SPCA for Monterey County received a call about puppies trapped under a portable classroom at Gavilan View Middle School in Salinas.

Teachers and students at the school heard crying under the classroom after returning from a school vacation. They figured it was raccoons or other wild animals. 

When the whimpering continued into the next day, a custodian and a teacher managed to track the noise and do enough digging to pull the puppies out.

The sad part: Two had recently died. The wonderful part: Three were still alive.

After the school secretary kept the rescued puppies warm, SPCA humane officers double-timed the tiny puppies back to the shelter for immediate veterinary care.

SPCA staff couldn't pass up a chance to apply some thematically appropriate names, choosing to call them Gilligan, Skipper and Mary Ann after characters in Gilligan's Island who were stranded by a storm themselves.

At just two weeks old, they were cold, hungry, dehydrated and very small—so small, in fact, SPCA officials haven't ventured a guess to their breed.

Their first night with the SPCA proceeded under the care of a foster who bottle fed them and kept them warm.

Then came the best part of the story: The SPCA learned of a lactating adult female dog that had been trapped at the same school Feb. 17—but was discovered days sooner and sent to a different shelter, Monterey County Animal Service.

The SPCA retrieved her the next morning to see if she might recognize Gilligan and the gang, after they somehow made it through five days without her, in a crazy storm.

"That's the amazing part," says SPCA spokesperson Beth Brookhouser. "There's no way puppies that young could've survived without their mother for so long."

The lactating chihuahua immediately took the puppies into her care and began nursing them.

Brookhouser is short on possible explanations how the puppies made it, postulating that perhaps another mother was present somewhere, though no such dog has been spotted and no other dogs have tried to access the space under the classroom.

Then Brookhouser adds another less scientific explanation: "They're little miracle puppies," she says.

The SPCA credits Gavilan View Middle School teachers, staff and students for the rescue.

And adds this:

To help pets like Gilligan, Skipper, and Mary Ann, please donate: www.SPCAmc.org/donate.

If you know these puppies or have seen a lactating adult female dog in the area, please contact us at 373-2631.

The puppies will be raised in a loving foster home until they are ready to be adopted in approximately two months.