Another Rescue

Yesterday, we hired a company to come and take down three dead oak trees in the yard and a bunch of other big tree limbs that were dead as well. They did a great job and it took them one full day to take everything down and clean pretty much everything up. Today, they came with a big truck with a big claw lift on the back and picked up all of the trees that they had cut down. Pretty impressive work and now we feel a little safer in the house without three dead trees hanging precariously over the roof.

When I got back to the house yesterday evening, I was walking around scoping out the work they had done and I suddenly heard this high pitched squealing. I kind of looked around and then I wandered into the garden and, amongst my wildly sprouting mint, I saw these two little baby racoons. One was huddled under the other and the one on top was loudly crying. It was pitiful. Thank goodness, because of the Invisible Fence, the dogs didn't even come near them - Calvin would have had a blast "playing" with them.

Anyways - I suppose that they were in one of the trees and I kind of think the mother may have gotten killed or something - one section of one of the trees they took away was high interest to Calvin and he was almost trying to climb inside of it.

I had called the animal hospital that I had taken the cardinal to before - they work with wildlife. The woman told me that I should just leave them because the mom would probably come back. I didn't feel good about it, I didn't think the mother would come back, but I left them. This morning, I ran out there quickly before I left and didn't see them so I was hopeful.

But, tonight when I got home, I was over by the garden again and I heard more squealing coming from a big patch of iris and wild onion leaves. I couldn't see in at all, but I heard it. So, I begged one of my nephews to come over and he helped me retrieve one of the racoons. We couldn't find the second one anywhere and I was feeling pretty terrible as I'm sure it didn't survive. Something probably got it or it wandered off. Who knows.

I did get a hold of a woman who does wildlife rescue and she had someone come over and pick up the baby. She had asked us to get the racoon out and dry it off with a towel and try to keep it warm. Thank goodness, my sister had just seen her heat lamp from when her dog had puppies. We got a big tote box and put the light over it and put the racoon in where it cried pitifullly for a while and then kind of fell asleep.

The woman who picked the racoon up said she was just ready to do the feeding for the racoons so he was coming at a good time -- I guess she had like 20 of them at home..... She gets them to a certain point and then has a release program for them somewhere. I was just thankful that at least it will probably be okay for one of them.