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Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
1 PETER 4:8-9 ESV
I’m sure that passage above was not intended to refer to animals, but it was a good one for Michael to keep in mind as our growing Ringtail Gang put our patience to the test. He wasn’t above a little grumbling, however, and the raccoons weren’t above committing a multitude of sins.
I myself was just about to expire from going round after round with them in the woods. I suppose the challenge of mothering raccoons was actually good for my health, as I really had developed new stamina and lost weight by running away from them on those hot summer days. But I was exhausted. Surely there must be easier ways to get healthy and lose weight, I thought, like train for a marathon, go on a liquids-only diet—anything but try to outwit this gang of very determined raccoons!
I spent a few more weeks playing chase during the day, but by then the Ringtail Gang had grown big enough to be out and about at night too. I left their familiar cage open wide all night so they could come and go, and they genuinely seemed to like the arrangement—so long as come bedtime, they could retreat into our wide-open garage to snooze rather than into their wide-open cage or the wide-open woods where they belonged.
Our garage was actually an ancient hewn-beam structure, the kind with gigantic planed logs that fit together without nails. It was built to house livestock in the 1800s, not cars in the twenty-first century. Once the ancient barn doors had rotted and fallen off, a former property owner installed a garage door that sort of fit and sort of didn’t. By the time we bought the place as a vacant old farmhouse, that garage door was in serious disrepair and was far more trouble than it was worth to open and close. We took it off entirely, blissfully unaware of what that decision would mean in regard to this future Ringtail Gang. In retrospect, it’s clear that tight-fitting garage doors are a marvelous invention, as everyone who has found a mouse nest in a car’s air filter knows.
But we didn’t have any such garage door, so the rafters of our ancient barn/garage became the gangsters’ nighttime headquarters, rest area (like pull over and go to the bathroom), and breakfast deli all rolled into one. My reminders to them that their familiar woods cage and homey hammock were available nearby fell on deaf, though attractively fuzzy, ears.
Don’t Rock the Boat!
We had stored important things in the garage rafters—for example, our four lime-green Otter kayaks that we so enjoyed, turned upside down. They weren’t Otter kayaks anymore, however. They were raccoon kayaks now. Apparently, our motherless waifs voted unanimously that the noses of the kayaks were the perfect place in which to take up their first non-cage residence. This in spite of my husband having cobbled together a nice little wooden nesting box that he installed, of all places, on top of the kayaks.
But the Ringtail Gang didn’t want to live on top of the boats; they wanted to live inside them. And to make the boats more comfy, they helped themselves to the Styrofoam float panels each contained, apparently voting them the ideal nesting material. Soon Styrofoam pieces were floating down from above like snow.
Was I happy that it didn’t look as if we’d be going paddling anytime soon—like not till next year? Not at all. Our family had been enjoying kayaking for some time. Was Michael happy about it? He was ecstatic. For all my husband’s willingness to go along on kayak outings, he hated getting wet. He had bought himself one of those kayak “skirts” that you fasten around you once you’re in the boat, so that not one single, solitary drop of water could breach your defenses and get you wet. And he never tipped over for fun (or otherwise) like the rest of us; he preferred to stay bone-dry even on the hottest of days. All things considered, the use (or misuse in this case) of the green Otter kayaks was not a big loss to him, which worked in the Ringtail Gang’s favor big-time.
A Brand-New Rest Area
It became a never-ending raccoon party up in those garage rafters. I’d walk outside in the mornings and find the raccoons all hung over—I mean literally hanging over—the middle rafter. They’d all be looking toward the house and hoping I’d come out soon and hand each of them a banana to start their day. Or more appropriately, to end their night. They’d wolf down whatever I had to offer them, and then they’d waddle off into the noses of the kayaks for a full day’s sleep. Sometimes they’d even oversleep from one day into the next as fall began to set in and the evenings grew progressively cooler. Wildlife rehabilitators keep daily animal care logs, and in one log entry I wrote:
No Ringtail Gang picture today because it has been two long days since there has been any sign of activity from the den, and—this is stupid—I miss the little blighters! I’ve been waiting weeks for them to go to sleep and leave me in peace, and now I have this intense longing to lay eyes on them and feed them a banana. What’s wrong with me that I miss them when they’re sleeping?
But when the raccoons were up, they were up and hard at it. Then how I wished they’d go back to sleep! They even installed a “rest area” on the side of the garage opposite where they slept. For that particular home improvement, they had completely failed to get the necessary permits with their local “zoning board.”
As the property’s official owners, I assure you we were less than pleased to find out about this development. The extra boards we had stored up in the garage seemed to make a perfect litter pan holder, and oh, how the guys made use of the winter sled we had left sitting on those boards. They decided it was the ideal litter pan. The sled even matched the lime green of the kayaks, so the raccoons’ loft decor was color coordinated. That seemed fitting because even though raccoons are poorly able to distinguish color, their eyes are well-adapted to see green light. I can’t prove it scientifically, but maybe that had something to do with their fondness for the kayaks and sled.
I don’t know how many times I emptied that green sled and cleaned out their rest area, hoping to discourage them from using that potty spot. Alas, raccoons are not easily discouraged. From the time they learn to walk, they pick a potty spot and rarely deviate from it. Everybody eliminates in the chosen spot every day. Even in the wild, raccoons are quite uniform about their rest area visits. This habit can be a nice feature when orphan raccoons are still caged and you can install a litter pan with sand or paper towels so all your cleanup is at least confined to a single spot. It’s not so nice when the one spot they choose outside happens to be an area of value to local human residents, as anyone knows whose garage or attic has been taken over by raccoons.
If cleaning out the sled were all there was to it, it still would have been an unhappy chore. But it would have been less of a misery if I had not also felt as though I needed a hazmat suit to safely dispose of the raccoon waste. I didn’t have a hazmat suit, but there were several times that I wished I were fully garbed in one. Remember those raccoon roundworms I mentioned at the start, when the rehabber showed me how to deworm the boys? Did I mention that they can migrate into the human brain?
A little caution is a healthy thing, however, and the situation certainly made me cautious. Plus, I knew I had kept the Ringtail Gang properly wormed all summer with enough of the appropriate worming medicine. Since that particular liquid wonder smelled like bananas and tasted like bananas, the boys never gave me any trouble about taking their full doses (and wanting more). And by then I was taking my own regular doses of an anti-parasite supplement as well.
Taking Us for a Ride
Besides their much-loved bananas, marshmallows were another huge favorite with the gang. A bag of marshmallows was one of the few things that could stop them in their tracks no matter what mischief they were cooking up. You can bet I kept more than one bag on hand at all times! While it’s true that it’s not a good idea to feed wild animals (or domestic ones) a lot of human food—particularly sweets—it’s kind of like giving your human children a cookie. You know it’s not the best thing for them, but you balance their enjoyment of the treat with moderation in all things. Besides, what worked worked! Sometimes I needed the sweet and sticky enticements to ensure the gang’s cooperation.
It was a good thing I had a bag of marshmallows handy the day my daughter Dawn was packing her car for a cross-country adventure, because the gang had no intention of being left out of that fun. Those furry gangsters took us for a ride that day, and it was no joy ride (except maybe for them). In hindsight, leaving the car doors wide open while we were trying to pack things—and while the four of them were running around loose at the same time—was just asking for trouble. The two of us were no match for the wily and determined ring-tailed gangsters. As soon as Dawn’s bike rack and bike were loaded onto the back of the car, one of the gang climbed on top of the bike and adamantly refused to let go.
“Mom, there’s a problem over here!” Dawn yelled to me across the yard. “I can’t get on the road with a raccoon hanging off the back of my bike! What should I do?”
“Hold on, I’ll get him! Just let me grab a few marshmallows…”
While that gangster distracted us as we tried to extricate him from his perch atop the bike rack, another gangster snuck unnoticed into the backseat.
“Mom, there’s another raccoon in the car! Get him out! Get him out!”
“Hang on, this guy’s still holding onto your bike rack with all four paws…”
“But this one just found my snacks! Come quick! Mommm…”
Burrowing beneath Dawn’s road-trip snacks, the backseat gangster soon got a whiff of potato chips, granola bars, and fruit snacks. Determined to investigate the crinkly packages further, that guy decided there was no way he was giving up his newly taken territory! We had to pay him a huge bribe in marshmallows, plus forking over a granola bar and some chips to get him out of there.
All this chaos didn’t even take into account the other two gangsters I knew had to be lurking somewhere underfoot. I felt certain they would enter the fray any second from a third and fourth direction if we didn’t get a handle on the situation quickly. It was the biggest rumble with the Ringtail Gang yet, trying to extricate them from on and around Dawn’s car when it was loaded down with all sorts of interesting items. By the time we got all the raccoons away from her car and all the car doors shut, I was running mighty low on marshmallows. Dawn didn’t have as many granola bars to take along on her trip, either.
The CoonieBear Chronicles
After about a thousand bananas each, the boys in the rafters started to hit puberty. That’s not as bad as it sounds with rehabbed raccoons, as long as they live outside by then. Free to come and go as they pleased, the boys started going more often, and for longer periods of time. Eventually, three of them—Sharky, Ducky, and Golden Boy—heard the call of the wild (or the call of available young females) and moved out of our garage entirely. I installed the woods camera far out back and got good photos of the three of them hanging around the feeding station. Clearly, they had now morphed from rehab raccoons into wild ones.
That left one guy, Skeeter, who grew up but not out. He stayed in his Otter kayak all winter. My rehab mentor said it was not at all unusual for one raccoon out of a litter to grow attached to a person and/or place and hang around the first winter. It might be the more needy kit, she said, because kits stay with their mom during that time and he saw me as his mother. She told me simply to enjoy having him around till spring, and then he would likely move on as the rest had. Meanwhile, she advised, I should feed my “failure to launch” guy dry dog food only, to motivate him to be on his way. That would mean stopping the banana fests he loved, and that was a bit of a no-go for me. I was too used to buying red-tape bananas, and too used to enjoying his enjoyment of them. A diet of dry dog food only would be punishment for us both, so I kept the bananas coming.
I was a first-time rehabber then, and as I said, now I look back and realize I could have and should have done things differently. But live and learn! Skeeter became my pal, and our attachment went both ways. I did respect his wildness (or his attempts at it) by going hands-off and no longer handling him at all, for both our sakes. I never again tried petting him or holding him—heaven forbid! More than one rehabber has suffered the pain of numerous stitches as payment for laying hands on an orphan raccoon that has entered puberty. I was never any good with pain, so I kept my hands strictly to myself.
Nonetheless, Skeeter and I became good friends that first winter. We “talked” all the time, and I even posted some of our conversations on Facebook as the “CoonieBear Chronicles,” which became briefly famous among my online friends. I realized (most days) that these conversations were all in my head, but I had to do something to pass the long winter, so I chatted the days away with CoonieBear (my pet name for Skeeter).
Finders Keepers
CoonieBear: Could you go get me a boiled egg while I chew up this green thing I found?
Me: Hey, wait a minute! That’s my scrub brush. I need it!
CoonieBear: Don’t you humans have a “finders keepers” thing? You should keep better track of your stuff. It’s mine now.
Me: Give it back, or the next time your water dish needs scrubbing, you’re out of luck.
CoonieBear: I can deal with that. I’m a wild animal, you know.
Me: So you’re a wild animal, huh? You might want to practice that a little…
CoonieBear: Yeah, I’m WILD. That’s what God created me for. And besides, you’re making me live outside.
Me: Yet you get your food and water from where?
CoonieBear: That’s what God created you for. Stewards of the earth and all that…
Me: Um, wait a minute… there’s faulty theology at work here somewhere.
CoonieBear: It works for me! Don’t forget that egg. I need to go chew up my new toy.
These “conversations” went on every day that winter, whenever I headed out to the garage to replenish Skeeter’s food and water. Northern Michiganders have to entertain themselves somehow during the long, cold winters, and I think I entertained a lot of people with my Facebook-chronicled raccoon exploits. If nothing else, my friends may have been amused by my apparent insanity.
Keeping It Clean
Even our two dogs sometimes became a hot topic in our imaginary conversations:
Me: Hey, what are you doing? I just gave you that toy! You don’t have to drown it in water already!
CoonieBear: Everything is better after it’s baptized.
Me: That’s certainly true about people. We’re better off after we’re baptized. I don’t think the same applies to toys.
CoonieBear: I’ve never gotten my paws on anything that wasn’t improved by a good dunking in water.
Me: Yeah, but honestly, I think as a species you raccoons have some OCD going on in that area. I mean, it’s three degrees out here, and now you have everything all sopping wet. You should follow Fritz’s example. You don’t see him dragging his new toy into his water bowl.
CoonieBear: But he’s a dog, and everybody knows dogs are a cleanliness-challenged species. Speaking of examples, I could give you a few, like when they lick…
Me: Um, no, let’s not go there. Keep it clean! That’s what this is about, after all.
CoonieBear: I really don’t know how you can stand living with two dogs in your house. You’d be a lot better off letting me live with you!
Me: Um, no, let’s not go there either, Mr. Wild Animal. We’ve been down that road before.
CoonieBear: I may be a wild animal, but at least my stuff is clean…
Me: Right. Well then, enjoy your new freezing cold toy.
Not Birds of a Feather
Our resident chickens also got in on the act. Thankfully, raccoons rehabilitated around chickens rarely harm them or even steal eggs. On the bright side, Skeeter followed this pattern. On the dark side, he wasn’t above sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong, including in the chicken coop. I went out to collect eggs one time and was shocked to discover that not all of the flock that day were birds of a feather. There on the roost was a chubby, furry creature not of the egg-laying sort, merrily teetering back and forth next to a couple of bemused chickens.
Quickly, I called to my husband across the yard: “Michael, come see this new breed of chicken!”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“It doesn’t have feathers, but it has a ringed tail…”
“You’re kidding!” he exclaimed.
“Nope. Not kidding!”
The Facebook “CoonieBear Chronicle” went like this:
Me: What do you think you’re doing in the hen house at high noon?
CoonieBear: You were in the house, and I felt like some company, so I came in. But that stupid fence flap above the gate only swings one way so I couldn’t get back out. I had to take a rest on this roost instead.
Michael: C’mon, buddy, I have some nice dog biscuits for you if you get out of here. It’s strictly off-limits to raccoons.
CoonieBear (ambling out as we held up the flap): Okay, terrific. Listen, that fence flap is going to be a problem for me next time I come in here. Can you fix it so it swings both ways?
Me: Um, we were sort of going on the premise that you wouldn’t be coming into the chicken coop to begin with. At all. Ever. By the way, how were the hens for company?
CoonieBear: I gotta say, they’re a few eggs short of a dozen.
Me (to my husband): What does he mean by that? How many eggs did he eat?
CoonieBear: You have to admit, those hens don’t exactly function at my higher intelligence level.
Michael (grabbing enough dog treats for our two canines, plus a raccoon): Because you’re so smart, I’m not changing the flap. Next time, find your own way out of the coop.
Hens (watching CoonieBear amble away): Hey, how come that big, furry chicken gets to free range today and we don’t? No fair!
Prodigal Raccoon
Despite his other daily antics, Skeeter left the chicken coop alone after that incident, which I appreciated—although I think the hens missed him a little. He lived happily in his favorite kayak all through that winter and into the spring. With the warmer weather, however, he began to venture farther from home base, as my rehab mentor had predicted he would. Eventually, he strayed by day and by night. At first he was gone for an entire night, and then for two. Then he would disappear for a whole week at a time.
Skeeter, up-close one last time
I vacillated between two extremes as our resident raccoon became a prodigal raccoon. At times, I was sick with worry over all the terrible things that could happen to him. After one of his lengthier absences, I was relieved to walk outside and find him hanging out in a roll of fencing behind the garage. I quickly snapped a picture that became my favorite photo of him. That photo also captured the last time I ever got that close to him again.
After that encounter, Skeeter began going up more, as well as out. Most of that second spring of his life he stayed nearby but out of reach, far up in the tall trees around our yard bordered by the woods. Whenever I came out and spotted his furry face up in a tree, he wouldn’t hide. But when I talked to him, he wouldn’t come down closer to me either. He was getting wilder every day. The more time he spent up and away, the more he seemed in his element living on the wild side. He was finally happy being right where he should be.
Before long, I didn’t even catch sight of Skeeter up in the nearby trees anymore. He seemed to have moved farther away from the house and farther back into the woods. That, too, was as it should be. I felt both bereft and satisfied, recording in a daily log entry, “I haven’t seen Skeeter in six weeks… he has gone completely wild now and has left me heartbroken but happy for him.”
After the final time that I saw him “in person,” Skeeter graciously made some cameo appearances in my woods camera pictures. In one photo a raccoon had its fur right up in the lens, so it just had to be him (probably tinkering with the camera). As I let him go in my head and my heart, I knew there would be other cries in the night for me to answer and other raccoon kits to help grow and then let go. It was not by any means the end of my wildlife adventure when he left. It was just the beginning.