It Won't Be Hurting Anymore
An elegy to a baby raccoon
On Monday it was raining, absolutely pissing outside. My room faces the east and I’ve always liked that when there’s a storm I’m the first to hear it. Waking up to the rain wasn’t a bad thing, only shocking because I had fallen asleep to it the night before. I wasn’t expecting all the rain. I don’t think most people were.
I didn’t work until the afternoon that day so I took my time getting ready. I ate my breakfast, I did my daily tarot reading, I chose what I was going to wear to work. But as I was getting ready to write before my shift my dad asked me to search a phone number for him. He told me that there was an animal crying across the street, something stuck in the fence. He couldn’t see what it was, just a gray body, but that he wanted to call Animal Control to see if they could help it.
The SPCA should be the first choice, but we have lost a lot of respect for them. Years ago my dad found a hurt groundhog while he was walking, found a payphone1, and called the SPCA to come and help it. The SPCA told him that the groundhog wasn’t a priority so they would get there when they could. My dad stayed with the groundhog for two hours and the SPCA still hadn’t shown up. I don’t think they ever did. When I called them about a dove sitting in our garden on it’s last breath they said the animal was, again, not a priority. I know of an old fox that haunts a building, the poor thing covered with mange. A worker in the building has called the SPCA asking them to come and help the fox, but they replied that unless the fox was on death’s door they would not be coming.
I could go on here about how awful it is for an organization that prides itself on “supporting access to services which help sustain healthy and safe animals in our community, protecting animals from (potential) harm, delivering best practice animal care so they may live their natural life in good health” as well as promising that animals will have the five essential freedoms: “freedom from hunger and thirst, freedom from pain, injury and disease, freedom from distress, freedom from discomfort, freedom to express well-being behaviours” and, from my experience, providing none of these things or at least choosing which animals are deserving of good treatment and which aren’t. It makes me unbelievably angry. I could write solely on that, and maybe it would be cathartic, but it may also make me more upset than I already am. And I’m plenty upset already.
So we called Animal Control, because when we have had to call them about an animal they’ve been helpful. While the dove in the garden died before an officer arrived, they did take it with them when they arrived2. When my dad and I called about the crying creature we were answered very quickly and a dispatcher was sent, though it took about an hour for them to arrive.
My dad also dislikes when an animal is in pain, and hearing the creature in distress was upsetting him. I walked across the street to the fence and used my phone to take a picture of whatever was stuck there to try and identify it, though when I saw it’s little body and paws I recognized it immediately. It was a baby raccoon, the swish of it’s striped tail on my camera confirmed that. The poor thing was wedged into the fence, it’s head and one paw as stuck as stuck could be, the other half of it’s body hanging3.
I don’t know the development of a raccoon, I would consider it a baby but it was too big to fit through the fence. When Animal Control did come the officer commented to the creature that it was bigger than he was expecting. Maybe the baby raccoon had fit through the fence at one point when it was smaller, maybe it had a growth spurt and didn’t realize that it couldn’t fit through the slats anymore. I wonder if it was looking for it’s mother. I wonder if it was old enough to be independent in the animal world now. Last summer we had a family of raccoons traveling through our neighbourhood’s backyards. The mother brought her brood of babies along the fence and would leave them there as she let herself have a few moments peace doing who knows what. Before then I never knew how loud baby raccoons could be.
My dad and I tried to pull on the fence, hoping that the little raccoon could squeeze out when we did but the fence was too sturdy. I suggested grabbing one of my belts and trying to pull it open that way but my dad worried that if the fence broke we could be charged for vandalism4.
Animal Control did come. I had gone back inside the house and tried to write. Mostly I journaled. The day before I had gone to a medieval fair and at one booth bought a necklace with a raccoon bone and an amethyst crystal on a bronze-coloured chain. I know bones gross most people out, I learned this the hard way when I mentioned to a colleague once that I was going bone hunting with a former friend5, but they fascinate me. I think there’s a beauty in walking through the woods and finding what is left behind by a creature as it’s returned to the earth, of finding a bone organically and finding a way to honour the creature it belonged to. I think there’s something sacred in that. I don’t know what part of the raccoon the bone came from6, but the necklace called to me. I put it on and hoped, somehow, that wearing it could send the baby raccoon love and hope while also worrying that wearing it would act as an omen7.
After journaling for a bit, I looked outside and saw my dad by the fence with the officer. I wandered over in my raincoat and saw the baby raccoon snuffling along the bottom of the fence, still trying to find a way through. It was free. My dad told me that the officer used a baton to pry the slat towards him and the baby raccoon was able to squeeze through8. One of our neighbours who lived directly across from where the baby raccoon was stuck came out and asked us what had happened. My dad explained about the raccoon being stuck in the fence. The neighbour said that he’d heard it crying at seven-thirty that morning. He didn’t know what it was, he said. He had to get to work. He talked about how there are so many rabbits in the neighbourhood now, hopping through different backyards. And the skunks! Did we notice all the skunks that were around now? So it was a raccoon making that noise, huh? He didn’t know what it was, didn’t know that was what baby raccoons sounded like. Again, he had to get to work. He was smiling when he told us this. I wanted to yell, “Why didn’t you do anything?” but I held my tongue. My dad did to.
“I don’t like the look of that leg,” the Animal Control officer said. He was watching the baby raccoon, trying to urge it through a larger opening in the fence. The baby was determined. I wonder if it’s mother was on the other side somewhere. It held it’s one paw limply beside it’s body. When it tried to put pressure on it it would quickly lift it up again. I tried to call the baby raccoon to me like I would a cat. Tsk tsk tsk, come here sweets. I didn’t want it near the fence, I didn’t want it to get stuck again. My dad told me not to urge it forward, raccoon’s can be rabid, even babies.9
The Animal Control officer was trying to urge the baby raccoon into the cage and the baby was giving him a hell of a time, snarling and growling. It didn’t want to go into the cage, it wanted to go through the fence. The little thing playing at being fierce.
A woman walked by with a baby in a stroller, a German Shepard on a leash. I wanted them to go away, I didn’t want the dog to scare it. The woman steered the dog and her baby away from us and then asked, “What is that?”
“A baby raccoon. It was stuck in the fence, but it’s okay now,” I told her and she walked away, satisfied that the little raccoon had been saved. I feel stupid for it now.
The man who had to work in the morning had gone back to his house by then. It was just my dad and I, the Animal Control officer and the baby raccoon, now in a cage.
“It’s leg is broken,” the Animal Control officer told us.
My dad and I followed him to his truck. The baby raccoon looked stunned in it’s cage, a blanket hastily thrown around it to try and bring some comfort. My dad asked, “You’re going to fix it’s leg?”
The officer shook his head. “It won’t be hurting anymore.”
My dad and I shook the officer’s hand as he put the baby raccoon in the back of his truck. It wasn’t raining anymore but it was cloudy. I was still wearing my raccoon bone necklace under my raincoat. My dad asked the Animal Control officer what the strangest animal he’s seen on the job was10.
When he drove away I walked with my dad to the house and asked pathetically, like a child, “Are they going to kill it?”
He nodded, “It would have died in the fence, or if it got out some other animals would have hurt it because it was weak. The shelters are full, and I guess it isn’t worth spending the money to heal it. We did the right thing, it won’t be hurting anymore.”
My sister had been in a meeting during this time and when she was finished and came into my room I told her all of this. I kept everything inside of me until the end, when I told her that they were going to put the baby raccoon down. I cried. It came out like a gasp. I felt the pressure of keeping it in behind my eyes, the tightness in my chest. Crying even though it was obvious I guess that the raccoon would die. Who would want to save a baby raccoon? Who would want to save a pest?
Still though, I wonder if anything would have changed if my neighbour had called Animal Control before he left for work. I wonder if the baby raccoon was found early enough if it’s leg would be okay, if it would have found the bigger opening in the fence and slid through and found it’s mother. I wonder when the baby raccoon broke it’s leg, if it was trying to climb the fence, follow it’s family and then fell. I wonder if it got so stuck trying to squeeze through that it broke it’s leg trying to escape. I wonder if it’s mother is waiting for it, if it’s mother is wondering where her baby went. I wonder if the mother can smell her baby on the fence. I wonder if she knows it’s dead, or if animals can mourn. I think they feel more than we give them credit, but living in the wild where death comes so quickly and so often if it becomes a dull sort of feeling, if grief is just a heavy, ordinary feeling like it is for me.
I wonder why caring for something for even a little bit of time can have it’s death hurt so much.
What Else I’ve Been Doing:
Reading: Finished Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin, The Ill-Fitting Skin by Shannon Robinson, Witchcraft Therapy by Mandie Em, The Dallergut Dream Department Store by Mi-Ye Lee, and Heartbreaker by Claudia Dey. Currently reading 13 Ways Of Looking At A Fat Girl by Mona Awad.
Listening To: Fantasy Playlist
Watching: Season Two of Six Feet Under, Season Two of What We Do In the Shadows, One Pace (Reverse Mountain).
Ahh the time when cellphones were just popping up but not everyone had one.
In a box much too big because they thought I said it was a duck on the phone.
I will not share the picture.
Anxiety is great, being unlucky is even better!
We didn’t find any bones.
This ended up being true.
No broken fence, no vandalism charge.
Anxiety is wonderful!
The illegal breeding of exotic bugs and reptiles, as well as an alligator in someone’s house.