I Got Him!

Just as I was resigned to the fact that I would be feeding 5 cats AND a raccoon I wake up at 3:30 and check the trap and it is full of kids clothes—and the raccoon.

I have to explain the clothes. Beside the cage and on top of the smoker was a plastic garbage bag full of old kids clothes from when they were in the 2T size. I had pulled it out to see if any of it was worth keeping. What I discovered is that when a raccoon is trapped it will reach out and grab and pull on EVERYTHING it can reach. I do mean everything. The smoker was knocked over; the entire bagful of clothes was pulled into the cage piece by piece; 2 extension cords were inside the cage and chewed beyond usability and sticks and branches and anything else in reach was now inside the cage.

When I checked the cage at 3:30 I thought he had escaped after filling the cage with clothes because I couldn’t see him in there. In the dim light I finally spotted his tail. I went outside to the cage, drawing the company of Bianca, and looked in. The raccoon was not moving. He looked dead. I didn’t poke him but I made enough noise that he should have moved. I went back to bed and couldn’t sleep, disturbed and puzzled as to how the thing ended up dead. Was one of the cords plugged in? No. Besides it was a ground fault circuit that would kick off before it did that much harm. Did he break his neck somehow? Should I tell Penny? Should I even include this in a blog?

I slept fitfully until 6:30, got up and went to see what I could do with the body. In the cage was a scared and very-much-alive raccoon resting on a thick bed of kids clothing. My guess is that he exhausted himself last night trying to escape and when I saw him at 3:30 he was deep in an exhausted sleep. Now the job was to transport him.

I put the cage on my dolly and rolled him to the car. I had to be careful not to get anything in his reach or he would grab it. I covered the cage with a sheet to keep him from seeing stuff and he, of course, tried to pull the sheet inside. I tied the cage to the dolly and loaded the cage and dolly combination into the CRV. I’m glad I wore heavy leather gloves when I did this because the critter grabbed my finger as I tried to lift the cage. He saw the sheet push in through the bar of the cage from my finger and grabbed it. The little guy has a powerful grip. No harm done, the gloves worked, but I was surprised.

I brought him out to an unpopulated area and let him go by a small lake. He jumped out of the CRV and ran over to the base of a nearby tree. He looked back at me, decided I was not going to chase him and decided he didn’t need to climb the tree. Then he slowly walked off into the woods.

I’m taking it easy today because my cold is trying to come back; I’m tired from my lack of good sleep and my back is hurting from bending over and setting up the trap yesterday. So today will be computer and paperwork.