Raccoons Gone Wild!

There is a main feeding station at the back of my woods and various buckets spread throughout the woods along with some den boxes out in the trees. Being the worried mother that I was, I would often visit the main feeding station at night and see who was about. Some hid out longer than others over the winter, but come April everyone was safe and accounted for!

Then something wonderful started happening!! April 3 I found Belle holed up in one of the den boxes. But it was not totally quiet in there....I could hear her new babies chattering away as she fed them! I was a grammy!!

Four days later, the chattering of new babies in another den box. Hoover was a mom! And a week after that, another den box with new arrivals. Brownie was a new mom too. Visits from Whitey and Ringer proved that they also had babies stashed away somewhere. Of the 8 girls released, 5 were new moms. Nel, Lexi and Paleface behaved themselves this winter!

Tragedy struck Belle in the beginning of May. I found 2 of her babies dead in the den box, 1 had minor injuries but was ok. Belle was beside herself when I took the bodies out, then the last kit to check him over. She eagerly grabbed him by his scruff, yanked him out of my hands, and dragged him back into the den box when I returned him. He officially became Stumpy since the tip of his tail had been chewed off a little.

I believe the culprit to be an unidentifed male I had seen at the feeding station right around the same time. Belle also had a minor eye scratch at that time and Hoover moved her litter to places unknown. I think Belle was out foraging (the kits were about 6wks by now), the strange male found the den box, started killing the babies, then Belle returned and caught him in the act, chasing him off and getting a minor eye scratch at that time. Hoovers den box was close enough to Belle's to hear the commotion and decide it was safer to move.

Both did fine after that awful day and one night in June I watched Stumpy crawl down the tree behind Belle and both walked off into the woods, abandoning the den box for a new den somewhere out in the woods.

Ringer was a regular visitor around 3 in the afternoon every day. (When you see raccoon's out in the day time, don't always assume they are sick! Most are mom's trying to eat enough to feed a family!) Then one day she wasn't alone! I think she wanted to show off the kids to me. She was a proud mom!

Throughout the summer the girls continued to visit, eventually bringing all their kids with them. Everyone had 3 kits. They had survived their first winter and successfully gone on to raise their own family! They had become the wild raccoons they were meant to be....even if they do still like a visit from their human mom on occasion. It's what makes all the difficult parts of rehabbing worth while.

Raccoon City

The summer with this wild cast of characters was raccoon city around here! The kids grew into big healthy raccoons.

On a warm sunny day in September the door to their cage was opened and the wilderness became their new place to play. Blondie, Brownie, Belle, Whitey, Ringer, Lexi, Gaper, Nel Mezzo, Hoover and Paleface were free and loving every minute of it!

They spent a crazy first night out in the woods and the following morning when I went out to check on them, I found them all huddled up together at the back of my property in a hollow log along the ponds edge. How cute is this! (you can't see them all in this picture, but all 10 were curled up in there.)

And so their life in the wild begins..........

In the beginning......

To tell their stories and bring you up to speed to the present day.....bear with me while I give you a little background on my raccoon family.

My first year rehabilitating wildlife was 2006. I poured my heart and soul (and ALL my free time, and then some!) into 25 orphaned baby squirrels and 10 very special baby raccoons. It was just me and a lotta babies that needed bottle feedings throughout the day! I still don't know how I did it all! I was quite overwhelmed and decided for that reason, as well as the fact that most of the rehabbers in my area wouldn't deal with raccoons, to focus mostly on them for the following years.

So anyhoooo.....Spring 2006....first came 2 two week old little girls. Mom had the nest in a chimney. The homeowner realized mom didn't seem to be coming back so after 2 days she brought them to me. One already had her dark stripe on her face, the other was still pale. So Stripe & Paleface settled in. (Unfortunately Stripe failed to thrive. Her eyes never opened when they should have -Paleface's opened w/o a problem - and about 1.5 weeks after her eyes should have opened she died suddenly with no signs of a cause or illness. The fact that she was slower to develop lends to a failure to thrive which can be a common syndrome. Still a terrible blow for me!)

About 2 weeks later came a litter of 5 that were only about 2 weeks old! A man took them out of his attic. It is unknown what happened (or what he did) to the mom. He brought them to a pet store and dumped them on an employee. Luckily she cared enough to search out a rehabber and thus my 5 new kids....4 girls (the quads) Ringer, Brownie, Whitey & Belle, and 1 runty male, Blondie.

Next was Lexi. She came from a home in Lexington & was about 6 weeks old. Mom had moved her 5 siblings to a new nest but never came back for the last one.

And finally we have a litter of 3 babies found huddled together on the center yellow line in the middle of a road late one cold, rainy evening. They were about 5 weeks old....2 girls and a boy! One girl sucked down her bottles eagerly.....Hoover. The boy just sat there and gaped like a baby bird waiting for me to squirt the milk in his mouth....Gaper. The second girl did a little of both, so she was in the middle.....Nel Mezzo (in the middle in Italian).

These were the first 10 kids I would raise then release into the wild approximately 5 months after taking them in.