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Orphaned Baby Raccoon Stole Our Hearts

There are many reasons why I remember the night I graduated from High School. All the usual ones: knowing it was the last time that I would see many of my friends, my school, everything about the way of life I'd known for so long. Following all the pomp and circumstance of the ceremonies of the day and the family party, I went out for a night of celebration with my closest friends. It was long enough ago that I don't even remember where we went, or exactly what we did. I do remember coming home just as daylight was beginning to dawn.

Trying to sneak up the stairs, I was met by my mother, who greeted me with a hard slap across the face for being so late. I was stunned, to say the least, but was too tired to muster up the energy to ask for an explanation, so I just went up to bed. What seemed like just a short time later, I heard the strangest sound, a kind of high-pitched "boop, boop, boop". It kept repeating. At first, I thought it might be some kind of very annoying bird, but it wasn't like any I had ever heard before. Not being able to sleep through it, I went downstairs to see what it was. By then, my parents and my brother had also heard it, and followed pretty close behind. It was a very hazy, damp morning. It felt almost like rain forest. Since the sun was still not yet fully up, it was hard to see anything at all. The sound was persistent and loud. With our flashlight, we traced the sound to a very small wad of dark fur on the front lawn. The mysterious "bird" turned out to be a baby raccoon who had been abandoned by its mother. We looked around as best we could for her, but she was gone. We knew that we couldn't just leave the baby on the lawn, so we brought it inside. Being city people, none of us had ever seen a raccoon up close before, and living in the suburbs, it was the last thing that you'd think you'd find on your front lawn. We had no idea what to do with him. He was very young, but not a newborn. His eyes were open, but he didn't yet have any teeth. We did a little research, took him to our vet and learned the basics of baby raccoon 101. We learned to feed him from a bottle until he got teeth and was able to eat just about anything. For the most part, we fed him a very healthy raccoon diet, but his all time favorite food turned out to be Cheese Doodles! He would sit in front of the tv and take them out of the bag one by one with his little "hands".

We named him "Thaddeus Booper Snurd". So many years later,

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