Victim of a wildlife Assault & Battery!

Got a call Thursday from the family at Baloo's release site....one of the gang was in the den box and something is wrong with one of the eyes. So I went over after work to check it out. Sure enough, Einstein was huddled up in there and not in the best of shape! The eye was obviously injured and his back feet looked swollen so I bundled him into a carrier and brought him home.

(At least I think it's Einstein! He and Willy look similar...I can tell by the fur color around the eyes who is who and with the injuries it's hard to tell....although he acts a little huffy like Einstein, the injuries would make any coonie huffy like that at this point!)

Brought him to the vet and on closer inspection...he basically got the shit beat out of him! Luckily the eye is ok in there...just a lot of swelling around it. Lots of wounds on his back and all 4 feet, but the worst are the back feet. One back foot was chewed pretty bad....lots of holes through the toes. Nothing he can't recover from, but it means he will be spending the winter as it will take quite a while for it to heal up. With all 4 feet hurting, he's having enough trouble walking, much less being able to climb and escape danger if left out there.

Here he is the morning after treatment and some pain meds, all settled into the den box in his pen.

This is the least of the damage on his feet....it's the other one that is pretty mangled, but he keeps that one pretty much away from my prying hands!

At least he's being good about taking his antibiotics...he won't let me near the eye to put ophthalmic ointment in there, and we don't want to cause more harm to the feet by causing him to struggle trying to treat the eye, so oral drugs it is because believe it or not, that's easy!

The vet thinks the wounds were about 3 days old, so he pretty much got beat up his first night out there, poor guy! Luckily he was able to work his way back to the safety of the pen...it took him a couple days, and I guarantee it wasn't easy, but he made it!

I just hope the rest of the gang is faring better!