Everybody’s heard of firefighters rescuing cats stuck in trees — but what about baby raccoons left in a parking lot?
That’s exactly what the crew at Fire Station 13 in Dartmouth faced on Sunday when they discovered a baby raccoon abandoned beside the wheels of a parked car. A second one was found the following day.
“It was cold, it was wet, and it was shivering,” said Richard Sullivan, an executive officer with Halifax Professional Firefighters Local 268. “So, the firefighters brought the baby raccoon inside, they dried it off and they warmed it up, and then they called Hope for Wildlife.”
When he arrived at Hope’s, the baby was severely dehydrated.
“It needed fluids, to be warmed up, and all that good stuff,” said Hope Swinimer, founder of Hope for Wildlife. “But it’s really doing well now, and the next day they found another one, so arrangements were made to have that one brought into us, too.”
The pair of bandits were brought to the nursery, where they joined about 23 other orphaned raccoons that are being given a second chance.
According to Swinimer, the rescue gets hundreds of baby raccoons a year — mostly due to human error.
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“Probably 70 per cent of the time, it’s a case where a raccoon has gone into someone’s attic and given birth,” Swinimer explained. “But they trap the mom out, not knowing she has babies up there, and release her far far away. So, the babies are orphaned from that point on and there’s no way to reunite.”
But there are ways to avoid the risk, Swinimer said.
“It’s really simple, they pick the attics ’cause they’re dark and quiet. By putting a light and radio up there, we’re giving that mom the exact opposite of what she wants, and over the next week she’ll move her family unit to a site that she finds a little bit better for her to nurse her young.”
Another common way kits become orphaned is when their mothers are hit by vehicles.
“We usually see the dead mom on the road with the little baby still curled up with mom, so it’s really sad.” Swinimer said.
She adds if you see a raccoon dead by the side of the road, it’s a good idea to pull over and check for kits when safe to do so.
“People will often gather up those babies and bring them to us,” she said. “It’s always good to check because this is the time of year everything has babies.”
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