Woogie

This is another family member, Woogie. My son has brought home so many animals and I thought this would be the one that would be the final straw. Shortly after our home was hit by a tornado in 1999 and we were living on concrete floors with plastic sheeting for windows , my son brought this little surprise home. He had been reading the classified newspaper ads and suddenly jumped up with a smile on his face and got ready to go somewhere. A 16 year old with a new drivers' license, a job, extra money, a vehicle and some crazy ideas is a dangerous thing. I could tell he was up to no good, but until he arrived home with my surprise, I had no idea how wild things were going to get. He brought home a teeny tiny little varmint, some formula and a baby bottle. This is the same kid whose flour bag baby from his family living class did not make it from Monday to Wednesday. I tried to make him take it back, but he said they wouldn't refund his money, then I said I thought it was illegal to own a raccoon, and it is, unless you have special papers from the Department of Wildlife, but... he had them. We fussed and bickered for hours, but in the end he was ours. He did feed the tiny little churring (that's the noise the baby raccoons make) furball for a few days then I was delegated the job, actually every one in the family had their turn before he was weaned.

He lived in the house in ever larger 'nursery' boxes, used a litter box and was more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Until the day I caught him fishing in my aquarium for my big fancy fan tailed goldfish and he got a penchant for climbing everything, including people. He loved to climb people like they were trees then sit on their heads, he still does, which can be a bit disconcerting. After some of these escapades he got a pen outside, but he loves to run around the yard helping garden, by tipping over all the flower pots and digging around for bugs. His favorite toys are any type of Fisher Price learning toy with knobs, horns, bells and mirrors and glow in the dark dinosaurs (go figure). He doesn't run off, except for one time when he was a baby and was gone all night in a large group of trees. He was so happy to be found that he never wanders far anymore. He's pretty big these days about 20-25 lbs. and is very handsome, except his tail is not as big and bushy as wild racoon's are, maybe because he was neutered as a baby or maybe just bad tail genes. We had trouble finding a veterinarian, most of our local vets called him an exotic and they didn't handle them. We heard of an old timer in a nearby town, who was the best vet around, had tons of experience with all sorts of animals and never turned any away, because he loved animals, all animals. He has since retired and we all miss him, even Woogie does. Our raccoon never has been mean, one of my best friends begs to differ on this, I explained he likes to rough house and she swears she saw blood in his eye, we'll never know which it was but she did have a many hued bruise on the tender part of her lower thigh. He loves to eat chicken, crawdads, applebutter and marshmallows, well, don't we all, but mostly gets dry cat food and grapes or raisins. In this picture he looks a little sleepy as he was napping prior to snapping this pic. One day while shopping in Walmart I passed a mirror and the reflection I saw was a dishelveled, slightly crazed looking woman with raccoon tracks all over her hoodie, do you think I MIGHT be a redneck?