She had been found alone with an empty belly in a parking lot a few days earlier, and had spent a couple of days with a veterinarian before being transferred to us. All in all, she was in pretty good physical shape, and she was destined to be transferred to another rehab organization that has more experience raising fox kits. But she required a few days in quarantine before she could be transferred to the other rehabber who would merge her into an existing group of kits. 

Being in a cage at WildCare can have risks for distemper-prone species. Although we maintain quarantine, if another animal with distemper comes to the center, there is a risk, no matter how slight, of contagion. In addition, this was a depressed, high-stress little critter who didn’t need the worrying activity of people entering a Ward several times a day.

Long story short, since our foster care cage was currently unoccupied, we got to take her home!

 We had her from that Sunday to the following Saturday when we drove her up to another rehabber in Sonoma. We weighed her a few times during the week to be sure she was gaining weight (which she was – I make a damn fine omnivore diet and always raise healthy little bowling ball raccoons).

We don’t get very many foxes at WildCare, and they are usually adults – in our 7 and a half years at WildCare, this is the first kit Steve and I have seen – so this may well have been a once in a lifetime experience. Although, another fox kit made it to WildCare a couple of weeks ago, so maybe we’ll get another chance sometime. After all, we’re the new (self-dubbed) Fox Team Leaders.  : )

By the time she was found and brought to WildCare, she was emaciated, cold, and shivering so badly she was almost having seizures; the pads on her paws had been rubbed raw from her attempts to climb out of the can. She is small, approximately 5 pounds on intake, and was a very late season baby last year, probably born in August. At this age, she and her sibling should still be with their mother.

After spending a week in a flooded garbage can with a dead sibling, she was absolutely filthy. Last Sunday, after a week of good meals, she was much stronger and stable enough for a little clean up.

In spite of her small size, she’s still a formidable raccoon so she needed to be anesthetized before we could safely risk bath time.

It was very cute. The first additional baby raccoon we introduced to our little singleton this summer was a little girl that Steve had rescued from under someone’s floorboards. These 2 were very bonded, as you would expect from to lonely little orphans. But his bond persisted over the months and they were still bonded upon release.

Our little bath boy was the most adventerous of the group, coming out of the kennel quickly and climbing up the embankment of the creek.

He was out exploring for a few minutes and none of the others had joined him. He started to get worried up there all alone, so he gave a call and right away the little girl came scampering out of the kennel and climbed up to be with him.

Then they took off up the tree together. We know which 2 raccoons they were because of the way we boxed them up and because some of the others had different-looking fur.

The rest slowly came out and then it was time for the humans to leave. I do hope they are doing well. We did our best for them, but in the confusion that follows a release there’s usually one raccoon that heads off in a different direction from the rest. The last one out got spooked and headed off the wrong way down the creekbed. Raccoons are very smart and I think that, once we left and the coast was clear, the little guy would come back and call to the others to link back up, but I always worry anyway.

Still have 3 or 4 groups to release this winter, but at least I don’t think we’ll be hosting any more at our house this year.

As much as they fight getting put into them, newly-released raccoons are hesitant to leave the kennels once they are faced with the big, wide world. There are usually several minutes spent watching them explore the area right around the kennel, often running back into them if anything startles them.

Eventually, though, they warm to the concept and it isn’t long before they head off and disappear into the underbrush.

Although I couldn’t go on this one, there are at least 4 more groups that will still be released this year. Hopefully, I’ll be able to go out on another release in a few weeks.

We have a little singleton raccoon who came in about 2 weeks ago. He’s the guy we got the message about after we got back from Santa Cruz. Anyway, he has to be on quarantine for 2 weeks before getting put with other raccoons to be sure he doesn’t have distemper. When he came in, he was dirty and flea-ridden. We killed the fleas, but without a family to groom him, he was still dirty and covered in flea-dirt. So, he needed a bath!

Fortunately, he is still really small and easy to handle. Frankly, it was rather fun to get him all sudsed-up and then have Steve rinse him off with a little water from the hose. His fur felt so clean afterward and he hasn’t been scratching nearly as much as before.

He’s scheduled to get a new sister this weekend. After our shift at WildCare last Sunday, Steve went to someone’s house to rescue a baby raccoon that was stranded under the floorboards. Originally he thought he was going to have to cut into the floor to get her, which the homeowner was okay with, but Steve was fortunately able to squeeze his lithe frame under the floor and grab the little orphan.

Due to their respective circumstances, she’s at a lesser risk of having any illness than our boy was, so she’s coming to our house this weekend after a one-week quarantine. This is good because our little man needs a friend in a big way.

In April, Steve and I babysat a 5-day-old raccoon one afternoon while his foster parent took the afternoon off.

He was very tiny and stll had his umbilical cord attached. He was very cute, but I think the raccoons we typically care for are cuter. It’s kind of like a newborn versus a 6-month-old. The 6-month-old does things and plays and is very entertaining. The newborn just sleeps a lot.

Within a 20 minute span, we had 4 animals come in that had been caught by a cat. 2 of them didn’t make it. I love cats. Some of my best friends are cats. But please keep them inside if you can. They are a murderous bunch if you are the wrong size.

One of our poor feline-attack victims was an adorable baby fox squirrel. I am biased and think that raccoons are the cutest wild babies we get, but squirrels are an extremely close second.

The squirrel made it through Sunday, by the way. I won’t know until our next shift how he does after that.

At this time of year, we get lots of first-year red tail hawks. We call them stupid juvies. They are on their own for the first time and finding the whole hunting thing to be more difficult than they imagined. Then it gets cold and rainy. They usually come in severely underweight or emaciated. This weekend we had one such patient, but with a new twist. It had finally managed to find itself an easy meal – it had managed to find a way into a chicken coop and killed the largest chicken there, a 10-pounder. It then proceeded to gorge itself. When the coop owner found it in with her chickens, she called the humane society to come and remove it. The officer got it out of the coop and tried to get it to fly away to no avail. Perhaps it was too weak. Perhaps it was simply too heavy.

We started making Looney Tunes chicken hawk jokes.

The chart notes said its crop was literally as big as a tennis ball when it came in Saturday. When we got there Sunday, the crop had not gone down in size and the food was pushing back upward and was in danger of blocking the glottis (airway).

So, Steve and one of the techs proceeded to remove some of the food while I held the mouth open. A couple of hours later, Steve and the assistant director of animal care had to remove significantly more food since it was pushing up again.

The strange thing was that, with the exception of several large feathers, everything rising to the surface was yellow chicken fat. It was like when you are separating fat from drippings to make gravy. Is it possible that fat would rise to the top of a hawk’s crop like it does in a fat separator?

I don’t know. All I know is it was disgusting. I had to leave the room. All told, they removed about 30 grams of fat and feathers from the burgeoning crop before it was small enough to put the hawk back in its cage. That’s the size of a very large mouse.

Ewwww.

Added to that this year, were the traumatic circumstances most of them came from, whether they were left alone for a week in the walls of San Quentin after their mother was removed or they watched another of god’s creatures take a shotgun to their mother in front of them. I believe animals have emotions and experience pain, and raccoons are very social critters. I’m just saying these earlier raccoons were a bit depressed.

But these guys were different. They were late summer babies, coming in when they were just a few days old in July. When Steve and I got them for a week, they were still getting 2 bottles a day. We are master weaners (well, I’m a master weaner, Steve’s just a wiener) and quickly got them onto solid food only. But, at this point, young as they were, they still saw us as caregivers. People often ask about keeping raccoon babies wild and the fact is, while they are being bottle-fed, they have to see us as a food source and not as a threat. We never snuggle with them or treat them like pets, but we have to be able to hold them at that stage. We start limiting our contact with them once they are fully weaned. Since we were just finishing their weaning, we were able to enjoy their company like we hadn’t been able to the rest of the summer.

And so they got to play in our yard, frolicking in the water fountain and learning to climb up and down trees (2 separate skills, there).

Here are some of the photos from the first weekend.

We found a great location for them in the woods near a creek, and not all that far from a small community in case they got desperate for food. It can be tough to find out that the Kibble Tree doesn’t actually exist.

We passed a fruit and nut stand on the way to the release site and Steve joked about releasing them right there where there would be plenty of food. We managed to resist that particular temptation.

Two of these guys were raccoons that Steve and I had rescued as babies from a house in Sausalito. The homeowner had called a trapper to remove an adult raccoon living in the attic. It wasn’t until after the trapper had taken the adult away and done his dirty deed that he homeowner realized there were babies in the attic, too. There were many things about this event that bear discussing as it was a cluster-f from the get go. I almost posted about it at the time, but didn’t get to it. Just a hint to guide you on your way: if you trap a lactating female, there are probably babies in the area. I’m just sayin’. Suffice it to say, I’m grateful the homeowner called WildCare for the follow-up as we were able to rescue the babies from the attic and take them into care.

Steve and I had them in our cage for about 3 weeks before they joined the other four in a larger enclosure at WildCare. It is really neat to go through all of that, to save the babies and care for them and finally to let them go.

I’ve never shed a tear at a release although I know others who have. I am always able to keep an emotional distance because I know their end-point is in the wild. I just love seeing the little buggers be on their way.