The Abandoned Baby Racoon

I rescued a baby racoon today. I was running around the lake prepping for a triathlon near my home in Dallas and there it was. A riveting baby racoon. An abandoned, alone, terrified, petrified, hungry, desperate baby racoon was there in front of me. I didn't know what to do. I videoed it to get advice from my Facebook friends. I was empathetic, yet scared of this wild animal. Why? I don't know. That's not my point.

Anyway, the point I want to make in this post is that this is a baby. All alone in a scary world. All it has is its cute face and adorable noises to get by and survive. I could have been anyone. I could have been a predator. This baby was wide open for harm. No one was there to protect it. It had no shelter. It had no adult racoon by its side. It had no dignity.

All this baby knew is that it needed me. It needed me and it didn't matter. It didn't matter that I'm not a racoon. It didn't matter that I can't raise it and teach it what it needs. It didn't matter. This baby needed love and protection. It came to me, not like a wild animal trained in the wild, but like a breath of life, in need of love and protection. It didn't do anything to deserve to be abandoned.

I was on foot with 4 miles left to go to reach my car. I was in no condition to care for a suckling racoon. I was flabbergasted and aghast by the way people were glancing at it and passing it by. I made some noise. I made a big deal, and finally some cyclists with heart stopped.

The one cyclist who helped the most wasn't afraid of the animal. The baby ran to him as he sat on the ground. He says the baby was looking for milk. He had knowledge of the age by the tongue. He seemed knowledgeable, he was taking control, he was calling help, so I left. I had no power to do anything. The baby was being cared for, that's all that mattered to me.

I was a voice for that baby all alone on the trail. I did my job, and my spirit tells me that baby is more than safe now, even though I don't know how things turned out.

The point of this post is the desperation of this baby racoon. How vulnerable and needy it was. How it needs protection. How it needs love. How this wild animal will come to anything for shelter.

This leaves my heart broken. That this baby racoon will have no mother. Will not get to experience the life it is supposed to live. And here we are on Mother's Day, and I find a baby with no mother.

Profound. I know how this baby feels.

Here's the first video I took of the little baby today. Such a sweetheart. some cyclists ended up saving it. In the other video I put on my Facebook page you can hear I started talking baby talk and it started coming towards me. What an experience!

A post shared by Jenna Ryan (@thejennaryanshow) on May 13, 2017 at 3:23pm PDT