It’s A Boy!

Welcome Back!

I am going to try to make this story as short as possible without going into too many details.

I walked out of the house last weekend and found this baby raccoon, about the size of my hand, laying in the dirt under our front tree. We let it be during the day in case the mom would come back.

(It had nothing to do with me not wanting to feed the baby raccoon from a syringe and then having to take care of it for the next week while everyone went to school and work and this raccoon kept me up at night because it was nocturnal and kept crawling out of it’s box. Even though Jack begged for us to rescue it.)

Me: “Jack. If I lost you, I would want people to keep you were I lost you so I could come back and find you! If it still there in the morning, we will bring it inside.”

In the evening, we were gone and our neighbors came down to save the little guy, because it would have probably frozen through the night.

(Though everything I read said to leave it through the night so the mother can have the opportunity to come back and get it. )

The next morning, the neighbors brought the racoon back to our house because they had baseball games all day. So I ended up babysitting a baby raccoon for the day. Our neighbors had been feeding it warm milk with one of those nose suckers for babies. I encouraged the boys to help…that didn’t last long. Even after all the begging from the previous day. This is the only time Jack “held” the little guy.

(So, even though I had nothing to do with saving the thing I still ended up watching it, feeding it warm milk through the syringe and cleaning it’s poop up!)

The boys did check on the him periodically. If he got out of the box, they would come and get me instead of picking him up and placing him back in the box. “MOM! He’s out of the box again!”

It was still shaking, so I put a heating pad into the box. He curled right up on it and went to sleep for the day.

(No, those scratch marks on the box are NOT from the baby.)

He was pretty stinkin’ cute, but I worried about him waking up during the night, making baby racoon noises and getting out of its box! He could get pretty loud when he was stressed out and I enjoy uninterrupted sleep.

So, between both families calling around, we finally got a hold of a wildlife refuge gal and off Smokey (yes the boys named him) went to live with 18 other baby raccoons…at this gals house! She later text and said the little guy had eaten really well and was enjoying his time with three other baby raccoons!

(The DNR and ISU do not take raccoons due to rabies.)

Sam: “Do I have rabies now?”
Me: “Just let me know if you start foaming at the mouth!”

We shared this story with Jason’s mom who told us, “We raised a coyote and kept it for two years. It loved being with our dog, Penny.” (What?!)

Then Jason says, “Do you remember how dad use to bring baby raccoons home and feed them until they were good to go on their own?”

Seriously people!