moneypenny007

Most amazing experience yesterday! My brother-in-law was caring for a orphaned baby racoon that someone he knew found on a bridge on the highway and he showed it to me yesterday. He is seriously the most adorable thing i have ever seen! He was in a dog carrier all curled up in a ball in the corner. I couldn't help my "omg cute fuzzy critter!" feeling and got brave and decided to try to pet him. No one else had tried because they were afraid of getting bit but my brain had a cuteness overload and he looked so sad and lonely! I slowly reached my hand in and talked gently to him and held my fhand out for him to sniff. He sniffed it a couple times and then curled back up. I slowly reached out and gently pet him and he looked up and sniffed again but didn't bite me. then i held my fingers out for him again and he sniffed and then put his little hand on mine! I was like geeking out inside from how awesome it was and I decided I wanted to get him a treat. So I ran to the store and bought some tuna fish and came back and sttempted to give him some. I put some on my hand and reached in the carrier. He sniffed at it but had no real interest in it. So I set the tunafish down and started stroking his haunches. He suddenly turned and we all thought he was going to bite me but he just sniffed my hand again and then clibmed up my arm and onto my shoulder! He started chattering and cooing and nuzzling my neck. Then he was crawling all over me, round and round my neck, back and on top of my head! I had a semi-low cut shirt on and a couple times he tried to scurry down into my cleavage :-P. It was the most amazing thing! He let me hold him close to my chest like he was a baby and just kept chattering and trying to get as close to me as he could. I was instantly in love! He was so fluffy and friendly and just wanted to be held and comforted. The tricky part was putting him back in the carrier! He just clung to me and cried every time we tried to put him in there and then we we finally did he clung to the door like a little prisoner and reached out for us and cried! It was soooo sad! I promised him I would come back but we had to go eat. Then my brother-in-law got a text from the woman who found him saying she felt bad for dumping the racoon on him and that she would take him back. We were both pretty sad but my Bro-ther-in-law couldn't keep him and my husband wouldn't allow it either. (Which is probably good because really he needs to go to an animal sanctuary or something where he can be raised by a surrogate and then released into the wild when he is ready - and i know I would get too attached!) So I took him back out and he climbed around my shoulders letting me pet him and hug him while we walked down the street to the woman's house. When we got there we handed him over and let him get accustomed to his new owners. Then they let him run around on the ground and we sat in a sort of circle on the ground and he just ran from one person to the other so he could be pet. Then he explored a bit but stayed close to us and kept coming back to us to say hello and get some attention. The woman took the blanket that had been in his carrier out and was putting it in a garbage bag and he instantly ran over chattering like he was upset she was taking his blanket. He tried to crawl in the bag with his blanket and then when she was cleaning the carrier he ran inside like "what are you doing to my house?" It was so crazy starting out the day seeing him as this timid, nervous baby in the dark corner of a carrier to this sociable, friendly,curious, attention-hungry ball of fluff. It was such an incredible experience making contact with a wild animal like that - just feeling his desire and loss for his mother and need to be loved and nurtured. It amazes me when animals and humans have that connection - when so often human beings cannot seem to have it with each other. I miss him like crazy already but I hope he is able to still learn how to be a racoon and experience life in the wild. And if that can't happen at least hope that he is given a wonderful life where he is loved and spoiled and fussed over.
I have been having an existential crisis as of late trying to discover my purpose and what I want to do with my life. I have been meeting with a career counselor and I still am not sure what I want to go to school for. Having that experience yesterday made me wonder if zoology would be an option. I have for a long time wished I could work at a bat sanctuary to help rehibilitate bats and work with them. Bats are my favorite animal and I would love do something good for them and be around them. But who knows. All I know is I really do not like working with people, and working with animals that have their instincts and not all of the drama people have sounds pretty tempting.
Also one of the comics I have been workiing on for a while I have wanted the main character to have an orphaned wild animal that is her only true companion, and now I am thinking a baby racoon would be perfect. I am thinking of naming him Philos (taken from philosophia - "love of wisdom"), which is what I would have named this racoon if I had kept him.