I don't understand the cycle of road kill. In the spring, when all the little animals are having babies, I would expect to see dead things all over the road. But it seems there are more dead things in the fall when the babies are mostly grown. Maybe it's because they're leaving the "nest" with not enough training about avoiding big rubber tires, or maybe it's because they're all scrambling to get their burrows ready for winter, and they're so focused on the nut gathering they don't look before they cross the road. I'm not sure, but in September, there are certainly a lot of dead raccoons.
And each time I see one, I say out loud, "Aww, Charlie."
One of the outbuildings--I don't know which one.
When I was 14, the summer before my freshman year, my father got the carpenter's dream job. His union sent him out in the woods with a team to rebuild the first European settlement in northwest Indiana--Bailey Homestead. These guys who spent most of their careers building power plants and bridges and steel mills got to spend the summer in the woods building smoke houses and fur houses and well houses out of logs, like real carpenters.
It was during one trip to the woods that my father ran across a starving abandoned baby raccoon. The thing was huddled under a fallen tree, crying that raspy sound only a coon can make, so Daddy picked it up, threw it in the front seat of his truck, and drove it home to me during his morning break.
The tick-infested baby was starving to the point that it might not have lived through the day had I not happened to have an old bottle from some doll I had thrown away years ago. I filled the old bottle with milk, and by the end of that day, the raccoon had bonded with me--I was its new mommy.
My neighbor Mr. Armstrong, who was my American history teacher in high school, decided the raccoon should be named Charlie. I'm not sure why--a year later he named my cat Winston Churchill, which makes sense for a history teacher, but Charlie? Regardless of his reasoning, it fit. Charlie it was.
I spent the summer with Charlie. At night, he slept in a cage my father built, and during the day, he explored the yard, hung from the front door screen when he wanted me to join him, and ate peanut M&Ms. Charlie sat on my shoulder, slept in my lap, ran behind me when I walked to the neighbors, climbed trees, washed all of his food in a bowl of water (don't ever give a raccoon a piece of bread, because it doesn't really hold up well to a bath).
During a hunting trip, my Alabama grandfather caught a fox. He cut the tail off and gave it to me as a souvenir, which I thought was odd and inhumane, espcially since he suggested that he didn't actually kill the fox. What was I supposed to do with a fox tail? I gave it to Charlie because it was about his size, and he curled up with it when he slept. I imagine it was a fair substitute for his lost siblings and real coon mother.
At the end of the summer, when I was getting ready for school, it occurred to us that Charlie would be spending his entire day in the cage and would only be let out when I got home in the afternoon. That's such an unbearable existence for most animals, but especially for a raccoon who needs to feel bark and touch grass. My parents found a park ranger who lived on a farm and was willing to take him in, so Charlie moved in with the ranger's dogs and became a farm coon.
It was my first experience in losing a treasured animal--I wouldn't have to give up Winston Churchill for several years. I missed the growling, poopy, furry little thing for weeks.
So, when you see a road kill coon, think of Charlie and how much he liked strawberry ice cream with real whole strawberries that he could pick up with little fingers.
Aww, Charlie.
And each time I see one, I say out loud, "Aww, Charlie."
One of the outbuildings--I don't know which one.When I was 14, the summer before my freshman year, my father got the carpenter's dream job. His union sent him out in the woods with a team to rebuild the first European settlement in northwest Indiana--Bailey Homestead. These guys who spent most of their careers building power plants and bridges and steel mills got to spend the summer in the woods building smoke houses and fur houses and well houses out of logs, like real carpenters.
It was during one trip to the woods that my father ran across a starving abandoned baby raccoon. The thing was huddled under a fallen tree, crying that raspy sound only a coon can make, so Daddy picked it up, threw it in the front seat of his truck, and drove it home to me during his morning break.
The tick-infested baby was starving to the point that it might not have lived through the day had I not happened to have an old bottle from some doll I had thrown away years ago. I filled the old bottle with milk, and by the end of that day, the raccoon had bonded with me--I was its new mommy.
My neighbor Mr. Armstrong, who was my American history teacher in high school, decided the raccoon should be named Charlie. I'm not sure why--a year later he named my cat Winston Churchill, which makes sense for a history teacher, but Charlie? Regardless of his reasoning, it fit. Charlie it was.I spent the summer with Charlie. At night, he slept in a cage my father built, and during the day, he explored the yard, hung from the front door screen when he wanted me to join him, and ate peanut M&Ms. Charlie sat on my shoulder, slept in my lap, ran behind me when I walked to the neighbors, climbed trees, washed all of his food in a bowl of water (don't ever give a raccoon a piece of bread, because it doesn't really hold up well to a bath).
During a hunting trip, my Alabama grandfather caught a fox. He cut the tail off and gave it to me as a souvenir, which I thought was odd and inhumane, espcially since he suggested that he didn't actually kill the fox. What was I supposed to do with a fox tail? I gave it to Charlie because it was about his size, and he curled up with it when he slept. I imagine it was a fair substitute for his lost siblings and real coon mother.
At the end of the summer, when I was getting ready for school, it occurred to us that Charlie would be spending his entire day in the cage and would only be let out when I got home in the afternoon. That's such an unbearable existence for most animals, but especially for a raccoon who needs to feel bark and touch grass. My parents found a park ranger who lived on a farm and was willing to take him in, so Charlie moved in with the ranger's dogs and became a farm coon.
It was my first experience in losing a treasured animal--I wouldn't have to give up Winston Churchill for several years. I missed the growling, poopy, furry little thing for weeks.
So, when you see a road kill coon, think of Charlie and how much he liked strawberry ice cream with real whole strawberries that he could pick up with little fingers.
Aww, Charlie.
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