Rocky the Raccoon

Sorry to keep everyone in suspense. ;) So, for the big news that I promised.

Saturday afternoon I was outside with Jesse preparing to film her (I guess that would be old school since there is no "film" involved with digital recorders) playing with a hula hoop. The neighbor is driving out of her driveway, stops, and calls over to us, "Hey, Jesse! There's a baby raccoon over here!" Of course, she immediately ran down the hill to see. I followed (video camera still in hand) and captured a few moments on "film" before we got caught up in the moment. Our neighbor is an animal lover as is Jesse. So they were marveling at how cute, sweet, pitiful, and helpless this little creature was. I was too but not to the same extent. We were looking around in the bushes and tree trunks nearby to see if there were any signs of a parent. Noone around and this was in the middle of the day. Raccoons are nocturnal so we figured this little guy would not be out wandering around (not really wandering but rather wobbling as he seemed frail and bewildered) without his mommy during daytime. Our nature loving neighbor asked if we wanted to take him in since it seemed like he was left on his own (for whatever reason...mom died maybe?). Of course, Jesse looks up at me with those big, blue puppy dog eyes that are pleading, "Please, please, please. I'll do whatever you say. I'll clean my room. I'll scrub the floors. I'll serve you breakfast in bed for the rest of your life." I said, "I don't usually like to intervene with nature." You know, natural selection and all. But then again, this little guy was probably going to die if someone didn't "intervene with nature". So guess what? We now had a wild animal in our house. First dillema.....what do you feed a baby raccoon who seemed to be too young to be weaned from his momma? We googled and found an excellent website about orphaned coons. It had everything from a homemade formula recipe to when to wean them off the bottle to how to get them to fend for themselves and go back to the wild. So for the time being we decided this little guy needed some grub. I head to the store (at 10:00 at night) to buy raccoon formula ingredients. Never thought I would have to make a coon run (ice cream run, yes, coon, no). He was SO happy when he got the first taste of that concoction. It took us 2 1/2 days to find someone that takes in orphaned raccoons. So for those 2 1/2 days, Jesse got to play "mom" to this baby. She was in heaven. Not once did we have to suggest that she check to see if he needed to eat. As soon as he would start making noise in his cage, she was right there to offer him some food. Did you know that baby coons need their mom to "stimulate" them to have a bowel movement? We found this out from that great website. Jesse was not too thrilled about this part, but she stuck it out like a trooper. Basically you take a soft, wet cloth (we used paper towels) and rub their anus to get them to go poo.

This evening we drove "Rocky" to the orphan ladies home to give him a better chance at successfully being released back to the wild. Jesse was not happy about it, but she understood that he would be better off with someone who knows exactly what he needs. She explained that she doesn't release them when they are a certain age, but rather when their behaviors show her that they are ready. They have to successfully hunt for fish, frogs, and other various critters before she gives them the thumbs up. We asked if it would be possible if he could be released back onto our property when the time comes. She said she'd have to come check out the location and make sure it had enough of a natural setting to be suitable. It might be since we have a swamp and woods nearby. She's supposed to keep in contact to let us know how he's doing. So if we get any Rocky updates, I'll be sure to pass them on.


Here's the cute little bugger. He is only 5 weeks old.