Rocky the Rescued Racoon

I haven't had much inspiration for the blog lately (except for a super fun baby shower last weekend which I will be posting about after I sort through the zillions of photos) so I'm extra pleased about my eventful Wednesday evening bike ride.

Every Wednesday evening for the past couple summers, if the weather is pleasant and my knees aren't complaining too loudly I ride the AABTS club ride. It's 25 miles and it's kinda fast. This summer the ride leaders and most of the other riders have been leaving me in the dust. So it's been more of a push-my-limits fitness ride and less of a social ride. But this week was a little different. This week I managed to catch up with Courtney at about the half way point. She was taking it easy. I've ridden with her before. She's quite capable of leaving me in the dust. Her husband, Cameron, is quite capable of riding circles around me... very large fast circles. Courtney and Cameron are new to the club this year and they're super nice folks.

When Courtney and I crested a small hill and saw her husband standing on the side of the road we figured he must have gotten a flat. He's had some very very bad luck with flats lately. This time both his tires were fully inflated. Turns out he was in the middle of a wildlife rescue. This little guy was trying to cross the road:

With no mama raccoons in sight Cameron couldn't figure out which side of the road to leave this poor fella on. Each time Cameron tried to set him down, the little guy would cry and try to follow.

Courtney and I rode on expecting Cameron to get it all sorted and catch up with us shortly. Forty-five minutes later our route returned us to an intersection about two miles from where we'd left Cameron and the baby raccoon. And there they were, sitting in the grass outside the convenience store. Rather than leaving little Rocky the Raccoon to certain death on the side of the road, Cameron had called the humane society.

I have mixed feelings about raccoons. I admire them for their cleverness, but also find them a bit frightening, seeing as how they are wild animals and all. Several years ago, while Buster and I were camping, a raccoon made himself a fine lunch by figuring out how to unlock our tote of dry foods. Later when I was alone in the campsite a raccoon, likely the same one returning for an evening snack, tried to sneak up on me and nearly succeeded. His little paw-hand was inches away from my box of crackers when I spotted him and chased him off. He retreated to the very edge of the campfire light and proceeded to stalk me and my crackers until Buster returned. Outnumbered, he finally sulked off into the woods.

So I know from personal experience that raccoons are pretty smart, but they can also be very pesky and more than a little mean. And I can't imagine it'd be possible to domesticate them. I figured the humane society would put down the poor little guy that Cameron so kindly rescued. I suppose that would be a better fate for him than getting run over by a car or starving to death... but not much better.

Courtney and I were still there outside the convenience store with Cameron and little Rocky when the humane society guy arrived. No, they were not going to put him down unless he had distemper. Sadly, he had some symptoms -- he appeared malnourished and lethargic, and there was a little bit of discharge from one of his eyes. But he didn't show the typical neurological signs so maybe he's not sick, just hungry. The humane society guy figured that momma raccoon probably got hit by a car and this little guy had been on his own without momma to feed him for several days.

Turns out there are state licensed rehabilitation folks for wild animals. I've seen folks that do this on a TV program called Michigan Out of Doors that Buster likes to watch. They rehabilitate sick animals and reintroduce them into the wild. The animals that can't survive on their own in the wild, like the eagle with the amputated wing they had on the TV show, stay with the rehab folks and travel around the state to educate the public and promote the rehab efforts. I don't know if it's the same rehab folks that I saw on TV, but the humane society guy was taking rocky to some rehab folks.

Little Rocky may never know how lucky he is that Cameron, with a big heart and a love of animals, happened to be riding by just then. We're all hoping that little Rocky the Rescued Raccoon gets the food and care he needs in the animal rehab orphanage and grows up clever and strong so he can steal lots of breakfast cereal from locked food totes and terrorize many a lone cracker-eating camper.