Thanks, mom!

Our little buggers have decided that they can eat solid food now! Last night, Katy put a bowl of sliced grapes and broken-up hardboiled egg in their cage, and it was all gone by this morning. They have also taken a bit of the KMR (Kitten Milk Replacement) we bought for them, but they don't like it as much as the sweeter stuff we made with Karo syrup in it. Things are looking up!

Being foster parents

Last Saturday morning we became the foster parents for two cute little baby raccoons. I found them wandering in a large grassy field just off a main road, looking lost and insecure. My wife Katy approached them, but they scampered 30 feet up a nearby tree. My children (Christopher,10, and Charissa, 8) arrived on the scene and nearly swooned under all the cuteness. After six hours of watching with binoculars from several hundred yards away, the little guys came down to the ground. Katy and another woman snatched them up (with much hissing and flailing) and brought them home in a cardboard box. In all that time, we never saw the momma raccoon anywhere and we feel pretty certain that the little guys are indeed orphans.

From what we can gather, they are probably between 7 and 9 weeks old. It took about 24 hours for them to calm down enough to take some "milk" Katy made up from an Internet animal-rescue recipe. They eat pretty regularly, but today we found out that the recipe is oh-so-yesterday and will give them diarrhea (yes, it does).

We have gotten some baby-care instructions, many of them contradictory, from the web. We are also getting phone calls and emails from people who have heard about our little adventure. About half are warning us of dreadful diseases, and half are giving us feeding advice. We are being very careful to not handle them, with the little coons living just outside our back door in a metal rabbit cage. The weather is still warm enough for them to be there until some more decision-making is done. We are definitely not wanting them as pets, but only keep them until they can survive on their own.