Raccoon Rescuers!

Last night, we watched Thor and The Incredible Hulk so Meg and I had all the backgrounds before we see The Avengers. This made for a long evening, and as everyone was headed to bed, Racoons were heard chittering out back. Looking out the window revealed Momma Racoon extricating one of her young from the netting hung from our conduit garden trellis's. We thought it best to just leave her to it because at the very worst she'd just chew through the net.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, the chittering had escalated to screaming, and further investigation revealed the first Kit freed but a 2nd Kit was caught in the chain link fence. It's a double fence along the back and he had managed to get himself through one fence but and had one arm forward and through with his other arm back and stuck in the second fence. Not only that, he had somehow flipped around so his belly was facing the sky. Momma Raccoon was unable to get him forward because his shoulder was stuck but she couldn't get him back wards because in wasn't possible to manoeuvre his panicky butt backwards through the other fence.


John was trying to wiggle him out while Meg and I kept watch that Momma didn't sneak up and scratch his face off for trying to help. No progress was being made because John felt to large/strong and didn't want to hurt the little guy. He said the situation was like "The proverbial bull in a china shop scenario, that, and frankly the screaming was quite upsetting."  I offered to take over and put on the heavy gloves.

He was just barely too big for the hole the way he was facing and I managed to wiggle him diagonal so his arm could slide out. With his arms free he tried to climb out on his own but needed a bit of help because of the bad angle. Somehow at this time John managed to get a nice clear picture.

By this point I knew he was okay because he had calmed way down and stopped screaming.

After he was extracted, he remained calm enough that he was easily deposited on the opposite side of the other fence where Momma had retreated (perhaps to check on the other kids). I was just so very glad to help and to see he was just stuck, not damaged. I was so worried with all that noise that something sharp had cut him, or Momma Racoon's tugging plus his struggling had resulted in a broken leg.  All was well as we set him in the other yard where momma was waiting with the other kidletts and we saw (from inside the window) Momma came back to fetch him about 10 minutes after we went inside.

P.S. No it wasn't cold. We were boiling hot but we geared up because we decided bulky baggy long sleeves and jeans were needed in case Momma took offence.