NaturallyResilient

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Last week I had a hawk story, this week it is raccoons, those little bandits.

My first up-close and personal experience with a raccoon was when I was living in an apartment in San Antonio. I came home one evening; the sun was low in the sky but had not set yet. I found my neighbor, Mark, in front of the apartment building, on all fours messing around in the leaves under the trees. I stopped to ask what he was doing. He said “I’m teaching this raccoon to hunt for acorns and roots.” Then I saw the young raccoon close to him.

Apparently a few months before he had been on his way back home from College Station and saw a raccoon on the side of the road that had been killed by a car. There were five little raccoons around her body. He stopped and picked up the babies and brought them home. (I am sure the apartment owners did not know about this). He took care of them and raised them, teaching them to hunt and when they started getting mean he knew it was time to set them free. He took them out into the country and let them go. They all scurried off but one came back. The one he had outside that evening had not been ready to leave, so he was working with this one a little longer.

Mark said it was interesting living with raccoons as nothing was safe. They could get out of cages as they had little hands and if they had enough weight behind them they could get the refrigerator door open. This raccoon was soon ready for the wild and I never saw the raccoon again.