Little Hands was discovered abandoned on the side of the road when he was just a few weeks old. Early in June, every animal rescue and rehabilitation facility in the region had reached capacity.
According to Nikki Robinson, a wildlife rehabilitation specialist, “When you ask what you should do with [an orphaned raccoon], they reply, “Leave it alone and let nature take its course” or “You can take it to a vet and they will have to euthanize it.” “That made my heart ache. I couldn’t allow that to happen!
While Robinson was working full-time, her mom, Linda, was semi-retired and could bottle-feed a baby up to five times a day. So after Robinson made it clear that grandchildren were not on the horizon, Linda, reluctantly, became Little Hands’ mom.
“The first time she bottle-fed him and he looked up at her, she just kind of melted,” Robinson said. “She treated him very sweetly early on because they like to be touched a lot. So she created a bond with him, even knowing he’d go back to the wild at some point.”
Little Hands matured well and was prepared to do it alone by the end of the summer.
They receive a “soft release” and spend some time living beneath the deck on her property, where Robinson said she will keep food out until they wander off and go their own ways. However, Little Hands had a cordial relationship with the entire family and was extremely lovely and polite to us.
“My mom has a porch swing where she sits outside, and he would come up and literally crawl onto the swing and sit beside her and just want his butt and chin scratched,” Robinson said. “He wanted his snuggles, then he’d have his food and wander off.”
For three years, Little Hands has lived in the wild independently — but continues to return to the house where he was raised just to snuggle with his mom.
Linda has taken in a lot of orphaned and abandoned raccoon babies that have nowhere else to go since Little Hands departed the house.
And the raccoons she releases into the wild continue to pay sporadic trips each year.
Even when they are adults, she waits outside every day, and when they come to visit, Robinson said, “she just lights up and she just loves it.” “She’s simply Mom; they adore her too.”
Because of Linda, the little raccoons are able to live out their lives in the wild, but just like her human children, they know they can always come home to Mom for a snack and a hug.
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