New Diet Help - Baby Raccoons

No, you don't eat the baby raccoons. But if you have them in your house, the smell will gross you out to such an extent that you won't want to eat. Just thinking about them will make you go off your feed, although alcoholic beverages will seem more appropriate as the duration of their stay goes on.

I haven't eaten much since Friday, at least not while at home, except for a delicious fish feed put on by Tim last night, but even then I didn't have more than one small serving. On Thursday evening, my oldest stepdaughter, Isabel, called to report that our dog was playing with a baby raccoon in our backyard. I was at a picnic with Eden, the 7 year old, so I told her to find her Dad, who was outside gardening. When Eden and I got home, there were two baby raccoons in our dog kennel and Tim was up a tree rescuing a third. At first, they seemed cute, but they quickly became stinky. And the smell is so funky (kind of like the smell of bad dog food) that you don't want to be anywhere near them. The neighbor dog had already killed one who had wandered out of the tree and the mom had been killed more than a week ago by the neighbor after it attacked his dog (and a second baby would be killed by the dog later). So there were really no options for the tender-hearted Meidl clan.

They seemed fine on Friday morning when we got up, but by Sunday morning, Jasper (Isabel named them Jasper, Monkey and Bandit) seemed quite ill and barely alive. So Isabel began to valiantly use a straw to feed him watered down milk every couple hours-even through the night. Not the right formula for a baby raccoon, but it was all we could do. They are taking them to the Humane Society Wildlife Center this morning hoping to drop them off to be "rescued." Poor little, stinky critters.

In the interim, the mud room where they have been staying has become so funky, stinky and noxious that one must hold one's breath while scuttling through as quickly as possible to avoid any of the stinkage clinging to one's clothing. The damage to appetite, however, will already be done.

I've called about a thousand numbers trying to find someone to take them off our hands. No one returned our calls, thus we are doing the dropoff at the Humane Society's Wildlife Center. I hate to contemplate their fates.

To partially quote Churchill, "nevah, nevah, nevah, nevah" take in a baby raccoon. Much less three of them. It is, however, an excellent supplement to a diet.