Saving a baby raccoon

While walking my dog around the neighborhood, we both happened to come across a little itty-bitty baby racoon, trying to pull its way across a lawn of stiff, unforgiving St. Augustine turf. Bernie (the dog) was instantly obsessed (me too), but we b-lined straight home where I dropped him off in the kitchen feeling dejected and then popped back to that yard in my car.

A neighbor was watching the whole thing and hollered that it had been there for about a day so we both agreed the parents would have scooped it up already so I happily cradled the adorable thing in some oven mitts and brought it home in a cardboard box. It hissed a big thank you to me too.

The folks at Back To Nature Wildlife Refuge took him off my hands over the long weekend, which is amazing, and promised to release him back into the wild when he was happy, healthy, and old enough to not do drugs and take care of himself on the streets of the big city.

I loved him and I wish I could have kept him, but apparently you can’t keep raccoons as pets (legally) if you don’t have a certificate that guarantees they are fourth generation and bred for captivity. Which is apparently a thing.