“It is enough to know, once again, that Love is real.”
Life has a funny way of trumping what you think are your priorities. Between my day job, caring for all the animals, and certain family matters there has been little time to pen a story here and large numbers of photographs of those come into residence still await processing. Yet one of the matters that occupied my time last summer was a love story. And it is a story that, out of respect for those involved, must be told.
We will start this love story story at the moment in which a police officer stands at the ready, gun pointed at the head of a youngster curled up on the grassy front lawn of someone’s house on a warm, late-spring afternoon. Waiting for the word – or a sign of aggression from the youngster – to pull the trigger.
We will never know what caused the youngster to take itself to that lawn, nor to curl up and fall asleep in that warm, late-spring sunshine. But what we do know is that there was nothing evil in its intent, and that such simple and benign behavior became of great concern.
Of great concern to the owners of the that front lawn. For the youngster was a small, female yearling raccoon.
Despite their predilection for night moves, it is not entirely unusual for raccoons to be out and about during the day. Particularly during the late spring, when mother raccoons are even hungrier than at most other times of the year and her ability to properly forage is limited by the care required of her babies. But it is rather unusual for a young raccoon to fall asleep in the middle of someone’s lawn in the middle of the day, and to apparently not be concerned enough to roust itself when eventually it becomes surrounded by humans.
Fortunately for the small yearling raccoon, a call had been placed to a local wildlife rehabilitator who told the police officer he could holster his gun and they would be right over to check out the situation.
When the wildlife rehabilitator arrived, the few facts known about the small raccoon and its presence on the lawn were shared and as the rehabilitator slowly approached her, the small raccoon raised her head; her eyes widened, and she promptly got up and came towards the rehabilitator. Everything about the small raccoon seemed to say, “Hey, there you are! It’s so good to see you. I’ve been waiting for you.”
With such a friendly greeting and no overt signs of illness, it was obvious to the rehabilitator that no one, not even that small raccoon, was in any imminent danger and they agreed to take the raccoon back to their home for assessment. The raccoon wasn’t altogether sure of the wisdom in that decision and decided it might be a good idea to now head up the nearest tree. But whatever was the cause of its calm, friendly demeanor didn’t allow it to climb very far, so with a firm grasp and a quick tug, she was safely secured into a pet carrier and taken off to be more thoroughly checked out.
The small raccoon didn’t seem to mind her new surroudings. She put up no fuss with being examined, then explored her big, temporary cage thoroughly, albeit with a bit of a wobble to her step. She eagerly ate and drank and the rehabilitator wondered just what was going on. But there was really nothing to be done at this point except observation.
And so it went until the following afternoon, when the little raccoon began to walk in tight circles and suddenly went into what appeared to be a severe seizure. The rehabilitator began to make phone calls to other rehabilitators and the word from all of them was grim. The little raccoon should be put down. The rehabilitator wasn’t so sure, though, because the little raccoon had seemed to stabilize. But then, later, the seizures started again and this time they were more frequent and more severe. When the little raccoon reached a stiffened, twitching trance of never-ending convulsions, the rehabilitator made one final telephone call. This time in tear-filled, heartbreaking search of guidance about humane euthanasia.
It was my telephone that rang that evening. I talked to the rehabilitator, who as it happens is a friend, too, and we went through the list of medications she had on hand and came up with a plan. From the descriptions, it sounded to me like the small raccoon was suffering serious aftereffects of a closed-head injury, likely stemming from having been hit by a car earlier the day she’d been found sleeping the lawn, not manifesting symptoms of a disease as others had suggested. What we planned for the small raccoon, then, was going to kill her kindly, or buy her body time to move past the brain swelling that would have been the root cause of the seizures.
Seeing the number on the caller-id the next morning, I answered the phone with apprehension. But the voice on the other end of the line was calm and quiet. Quiet in the way some people speak when confronted by something good for which they have no explanation. It seems the small raccoon had, literally, slept like the dead and had awakened with a renewed and rather seemingly intact and healthy sense of life. She was a tad unsteady on her feet, but considering the medication, this was not unexpected. Certainly some very good news and, unless things changed for the worse in the next 24-48 hours, it looked like the small raccoon could be on her way to eventual recovery.
And so it was. The next couple of weeks passed and through what became nearly daily phone calls I learned how the small raccoon now toddled about happily, especially playing in the ground cover, always quietly but obviously contentedly doing the tactile explorations all raccoons do, encouraged all the while by my friend. It quickly became that evident that my friend was decidedly devoted to this small raccoon. And, more rarely and important to this particular tale, vice-versa.
By serendipitous circumstance I had the opportunity to go see them one weekend; rare is the available time during the spring and summer for those of us who do wildlife rehabilitation and work a regular job to pay for it to do something as mundane as go visiting. And to my delight, I got to meet the small raccoon whose very presence was now like a wee miracle of sorts. With a quiet, self-contained merriness, she ambled over to check me out and even deigned me a suitable playmate but, quickly bored, as is the way of most raccoons, she ambled off in search of more appropriate curiosities. I watched all of this with, admittedly, rather misty-eyed amazement. To my experienced eyes, this small bundle of ring-tailed fur was not going to be releaseable for some time (if ever), but she was very obviously one incredibly contented soul just loving life and, slap my ass with a hairless cat, she loved my friend perhaps most of all.
The enormous size and solidness of the heart bond between this small-of-stature human and the small raccoon was demonstrated by a frightening mishap that is burned into my memory like a photograph that is as clear as I write these words as the day I saw it with my own eyes.
My friend and I were seated on her deck, feeling right there among the treetops as it is built a story above the tree-filled portion of the downward-sloping backyard, chatting away about silly things like surgical scars while the raccoon amused her own small self by exploring said deck. Suddenly we heard a rather loud noise, one that sounded suspiciously like something about the size of… oh, let’s say a small raccoon…had fallen onto the ground below us. There was that moment when the world stops for a heartbeat, and then my friend and I raced down the stairs to find that, indeed, the small raccoon had managed to fall over the side. She was unhurt; in fact at first glance she seemed rather nonplussed by the experience.
But my friend picked her up anyway, and it is that next moment that revealed to me one of those things for which there really are no words but for which every heart strives to achieve. The small raccoon wrapped herself around my friend just as would a small child. Arms tight around my friend’s neck, legs tight around my friend’s waist, the small raccoon pressed her face into the crook of my friend’s neck and then simply closed her eyes. My friend’s eyes were filled with the tears of any frightened but relieved caregiver, and my own eyes welled up in both relief and at the magnitude of the devotion displayed so plainly in front of me. For a brief moment I was witness to the beautiful possibility of no boundaries, just two souls who shared a respect and understanding that when added together was pure and simple Love.
Like all the very best of loves, there is never enough time and so it was that the phone rang one Sunday morning with that most dreaded news. Through her sobs my friend told me that the small raccoon had taken a quick downturn the day before and had slipped away during the night. There is no comfort one can give but because we both needed to hear it I reassured my friend that she had done right by that sweet, wild soul. There was a purpose for their coming together, this small, slim human and equally small, slim raccoon and though it may never be completely understood, who are we to judge?
It is enough to know, once again, that Love is real.
