An Iowa Garden

Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Fooey... Last spring as I was walking along the edge of one of the ravines, I heard a high-pitched chirping, and spied a baby racoon by a brush pile, obviously calling for his mom. It was soon joined by three others, who crawled up to me, all calling loudly. It was worrisome that they were out in the open in the middle of the day, but I know not to intefere with wild critter-babies unless absolutely mandatory, as usually their mom shows up, only to find the babies gone, gathered up by some well-meaning soul. I was deeply afraid a hawk, owl, or fox would get them, as they constantly cried for their mom, but I left them be. The next day, they were all still miraculously there in the open, in a little pile, still at times calling out, but more weakly. I still left them, but by evening, still no mom, with temperatures expected in the low 30's, and they were hardly moving now, so I gathered them in, and took them into the greenhouse, and fed them condensed milk with a dropper. They were just as cute as little buttons, crawling all over the place, and sucked down milk until their little tummies bulged, and they fell asleep in a ball. The next day I took them back to the ravine and left them all day, but no mom, who I sadly concluded was either run over, or trapped and hauled away, so I gathered them up again, and the next day after a last few unproductive hours back at the ravine, I took them to our animal shelter. They told me they have a gal who is a racoon rehabilitator, who only has nine fingers, having lost one finger to one of her charges. Now this so impressed me, that she would be so dedicated, that I wrote out a check for $100 on the spot to help with her expenses. I wanted to ask if her first name was Sal, but didn't.The picture was taken just before their trip to the shelter; it was the best I could do, since I would set them down together, and as I would pick up my camera, they were each heading off in a different direction. My real point in telling this story (besides showing a cute picture) is to remind everybody to think when live-trapping critters. In the spring, the critters are raising their young, and the animal you humanely live-trap and haul away may have little, helpless babies tucked away in a woodpile, waiting for their mom's return. A couple of years ago racoons were just absolutely ripping up my flower beds, digging up the bark mulch looking for lunch, and I reluctantly got a live trap, and ended up hauling away eight racoons... it was only dumb luck that I was trapping later in the summer, as I never thought about leaving orphans. Every night there was another racoon in the trap, and I finally gave up. We live at the end of a dead end street in the woods, and it finally dawned on me that probably other people were dropping off their racoons at our place as fast as I was hauling them away. This was confirmed when as I loaded the last racoon in the truck, he yelled "shotgun!" As I related in a recent story about a baby turtle, interfering in critter's lives often ends badly. A couple of years ago a high wind storm blew a robin's nest out of a fir tree in our back yard. All the babies, who were new hatchlings with almost no feathers, were dead of exposure, except one. There was no nest to put him back in, and it was very cold and raining, so we reluctantly gathered him up and put him in a box in the back den, and the next day took him to the animal shelter. Well, for two weeks after that his parents beat at the window to that den and chirped,trying to get in; how they knew that the baby had been in there, in a box in the corner of the room completely away from the window, is beyond me. I wished I had tried to build a nest of some sort and tried to put him back in the tree, but I guess there was no winning in that case. We try to be good stewards of our land and its critters, and are rewarded in turn... one warm summer eve as my wife and I walked up the garden path, Liz commented about how the biggest mulberry tree was moving about, thinking it strange as there was no wind. We then counted nine racoons up in the highest branches, shaking them to get the mulberries to fall to the ground, where they gorged themselves. I said to Liz, "Isn't it great to live on the edge of town, near the coontry." Liz said "Oh, brother!" and walked slowly on up the path.