“LET HIM ALONE, ALAN” (said a voice from within)
alan skeoch
June
I caught the flicker of movement on the gravel fringe of the Fifth Line just below our farm. A little ball of something that looked alive but barely so. Moving in jerks and starts. So I braked and backed up.
A baby racoon was trying to get nourishment from some scrap of food. It was alone and certainly not in the best of health. The back legs were wet…perhaps from wading through the swamp but also perhaps from something more sinister.
I did nothing. Took these pictures. Bade the little fellow farewell and drove away. That is an appropriate action with wild things.
years ago we were given a baby raccoon that fell down a neighbours chimney. Smaller than this raccoon. Tiny. We fed it and raised it as one of our family with the kids, the dog and the cat. Ricky the Raccoon was personable…loved to crawl up our arms and perch on our heads. As warm and loving as a
puppy.
But then Ricky became an adult. It was sudden. He started to bite and get hostile. He was a wild creature and wanted to live his own kind of life among his own kind. We let him go in a corn field and hoped for the best but expected the worst.
Remembering this I drove away.
alan skeoch
June 2018
