furryfriends

Previously I wrote a little story about the Possum who frequented our garage.  But a few years earlier we were visited by some raccoons.  Not just one, but several.  My guess was that it was a whole family. 

It was during the time when we were leaving our garage door partially open to provide food and shelter for the two cats in our neighborhood who had been neglected by their owner.  The raccoons started wandering in to eat the cat food too.  By the way, they are very messy eaters.  I believe I read that they wash their food first, so the water bowl was always dirty and nasty after they had been in for a meal.  Either that or they were washing their feet! 

I’m afraid the raccoons were a little more intimidating than the possum.  At first it was just one, but I guess he decided to bring his whole family back for dinner.  One evening I looked out there and saw four of them.  Of course they were afraid of us and started to run away.  But they were growling as they went.  Because of the concern of rabies, we borrowed a trap from our Humane Society.   There was one raccoon in particular that concerned us because he apparently had been injured.  He dragged one of his hind legs, so he was slow and clumsy getting around.  We set the trap and sure enough, we caught him.  Our plan was to trap him and take him to the Humane Society.  I guess we thought they would patch him up and set him free.  But what I didn’t realize was that they would automatically destroy him. And the poor thing was absolutely terrified.  Raccoons look so soft and cuddly and even though I knew better, I would have loved to be able to pet him.  He growled at us and even though we were afraid to get to close, my daughter and I struggled to open the trap so he could get out.  We just didn’t have the heart to take him in to be destroyed. 

So there we were in the garage, one trying to distract him, while the other opened the cage to free him.  It took us a good fifteen minutes to accomplish it.  As soon as the cage door was open, we ran back into the house and shut the door.  Too bad we didn’t have someone videotape it.