Higgins' Journal(Part Eight of Twelve)

The life and times of a young raccoon

being the journal of Alex Snow

copyright Alex Snow (1998)

Eating solid food during the last few days seems to have given him a lot more energy. He scrambled around inside the house all afternoon, then climbed up in trees all evening. I left food, mostly chicken, boiled egg, grapes, and catchow in his cage with his waterbowl, leaving him the freedom of the night. This is his first night out alone.

Friday 15 June. Higgins was in his cage asleep at 8 a.m. today after his night on the town. All the food in his bowl was gone, except the grapes, and the waterbowl was dry. I suspect that a cat may have sneaked in and eaten the food. A raccoon probably would have eaten the grapes, and would almost certainly have left water in the bowl with traces of food in it from dousing. It all looks too tidy to be raccoon's work. Higgins seemed real pleased to see me -- very affectionate. He came into the house for a 1 oz. bowl of Esbilac, some macaroni and cheese, and kaopectate. 2"He scurried around the house, visiting all his favorite places and playing "monkey on a branch" with me. He checked over every inch of the bathroom, including the toilet, and did something he hadn't bothered with in days -- slipped down under the covers of my bed and took a little rest. put him back out in his cage after about 1 1/2 hours and he slept all day. __2I awoke him at about 8.45 p.m. He ate heartily of macaroni and cheese, Nine Lives chicken, boiled egg, grapes, and several ounces of Esbilac in a saucer, and kaopectate. He showed no inclination to play outside. When I carried him out, he followed me right back in again. Whoever ate his food last night seems to have put the fear of the devil into him! He played in the house in all his favorite haunts, spending most of his time in my bedroom preventing me from going to sleep. He ate a daddylonglegs on the bathroom floor. Along about midnight I put dogchow and catchow in his foodbowl, plus water and ice cubes in his waterbowl, and carried him out to the cage. He followed me back in again, fast. So we played awhile, mostly "monkey on a branch". He loves wrestling. kFinally, at 1.30 a.m. I was too tired to play any more. I went out to check his cage before putting him in it and realized that I must have left the cage door open. The foodbowl was empty and floating in the waterbowl were some dissolved pieces of dogchow and some pine shavings from the cage floor -- evidence of raccoon dousing. The unmitigated gall! Poor Higgins. When I got more food and water together and put him in the cage and shut the door, he grumbled and chittered to himself. His territory so invaded! His goodies eaten! I left him to meditate on the wickedness of thieves. I don't think he's going to feel too safe in that cage for a while yet.

Saturday 16 June Higgins took two sizeable feedings of 3 or 4 oz. Esbilac in a bowl, and a mixture in another bowl of chopped apple, boiled egg, Nine Lives chicken, dogchow, catchow, grapes, blueberries, a couple of marshmallows, some leftover macaroni and cheese, and kaopectate. This afternoon a light misty drizzle settled in, cooling the air and dampening the ground. Higgins and I went exploring while no one else seemed to be about. He stayed mainly on the ground, scampering in the dim evening light like a tiny roly-poly wraith, a blurred shadow among the weeds. The undergrowth in the woodlot is so dense that the ground is hardly wet under the jewelweed and brambles. He batted some unripe mayapples around and sat under the umbrella of their leaves listening to the soft splish-splashing of the rain. Then he slipped quietly back to the yard and climbed the blue spruce. Beneath its thick foliage all was dry. I sat below while he decimated an old abandoned birds' nest, robins I think, and dropped the debris on my head. What else can you do on a wet Saturday afternoon? At night after I fed him, I left the cage door open. Only a bowl of water sat inside, no food to attract the local thieves. Today I sterilized the baby bottle for the last time and put it away in a cupboard. He drinks out of a bowl now, like a real grown-up

Sunday 17 June. Higgins was snoozing in his ideal raccoon log in the cage this morning. He gladly came into the house away from the heat and humidity. He feasted on his usual mixture, plus some more blueberries, which he really seems to like. He has red abrasions on his two middle fingers. I put medicated ointment on them. He spent the afternoon in air-conditioned comfort in his soffit. His measurements are now: rear feet 3 3/4", tail 8 3/4", body 11", head 5", ( i.e. nose to tail = 24 3/4") and between the base of his ears is approximately 3 3/4".After a couple of days of almost normal bowel movements, he had diarrhea again this afternoon. It was dark, blueish-purplish-black diarrhea. I suspect the blueberries. I shall cut out the fruit for a couple of days and increase the kaopectate. I gave him three 3 cc. doses of kaopectate today, and no fruit at the midnight feeding. We still play "monkey on a branch" after every meal. His wrestling has become energetic. I think this activity substitutes for the play of littermates in the den. I always know when he wants to play this game because he grabs my fingers in his mouth and shakes them from side to side while looking at me pleadingly.Tonight I again put only a waterbowl in his cage, no food to attract other animals, and left the door open so that Higgins can get in if he wants to. He went off adventuring through the night.

Monday 18 June.

this is a birthday

Tuesday 19 June. The red abrasions on Higgins' right hand fingers are healing up some, but apparently still hurt him. He spends quite a while at his bowl dipping his hand into the milky formula and licking the injured fingers. He does not always lap the liquid with his tongue, he sometimes puts his whole mouth into it and drinks like an adult. The virtue of the way raccoon noses work is that the animal's mouth can be under water while the nose is above the surface. It is an excellent adaptation for swimming. The crescent-shaped nostrils are on top of the nose. D3He seems to have developed a real fascination for the laundry 'chute. Today he disappeared after his brunch and playtime, and for a while I couldn't find him anywhere. Then I thought to look in the 'chute. There he was, burrowing in the clothes and wrestling with a pair of underpants, happy as a lark. I gave him kaopectate today, three 3 cc. doses, and the only fruit he ate was a little apple. He ate chicken (real stuff, not Nine Lives processed stuff), boiled egg, macaroni, and dogchow. He picked out the chicken pieces to eat first, then nibbled at the other stuff. He drank about 5 oz. formula in three feedings: at a 5 p.m. snack of marshmallow and Esbilac, as well as brunch, and at midnight. He eats most of his food directly from the bowl, but he runs off with the chicken. He hides with it. He guards it. If I approach him to give him something, or stroke his neck, or whatever, he runs farther away and guards the chicken piece even more. The macaroni he douses in his bowl of formula.;xgI left no food in his cage overnight again. I have seen no evidence of marauding visitors since I began this practice. Leaving him without food may also encourage Higgins to look for food on his nocturnal forays. I know he has found the cherries out there, wild and cultivated, but I'm not sure what else he may get. He had diarrhea again this midnight.

Wednesday 20 June. My heart missed a beat this morning as I looked for Higgins in his cage -- and saw that he was gone. A light drizzle was falling and I wandered disconsolately around the yard calling his name, fearful that he was lying squished by a car on the nearby road. I had given up hope and returned to the empty cage, when all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye I saw a movement in the top of the blue spruce -- and -- yes! it was that familiar little face peeking out at me. He was hiding from the rain in his favorite dry spot. The cage does not get wet when it rains, it's sheltered by the porch and juniper bushes, but its sides are open to wind and perhaps he feels safer up in a tree than down on the ground. He seemed very happy to see me, came clambering down from the tree headfirst, jumped onto my shoulder, and pushed his nose into my mouth (raccoon French kiss?). Then he licked my face all over. His whole body was fragrant of spruce; he must have been up there a while. He ate little, 4 oz. Esbilac and some boiled egg, but seemed content.He seems to be predominantly right handed. He uses his right more than his left in climbing, playing, and eating. This may account for his ability to turn or unscrew things. He just pulls more forcefully with his right paw than the left, hence turning things to the right. For example, I keep a hot water bottle in the nightstand beside my bed (no water in it) with the bottletop only loosely screwed in. On several occasions he has unscrewed the top and run off with it to play. Tonight's capers provided another instance of raccoon imitativeness. While I was feeding Higgins apples, chicken, boiled egg, and dogchow in the kitchen, a wild local raccoon appeared on the back porch and began dousing dogchow. I carried Higgins to the door where he could watch this large raccoon eating its fill. Eventually it wandered off. Immediately Higgins began struggling to get down. He promptly ran over to the dogchow and water bowls, in which he had taken little previous interest, and imitated in exact detail the motions of the wild raccoon. He picked up a piece of chow, dropped it in the waterbowl, scrabbled about to find it again, and chomped it down. He did this for several minutes, then ran off sniffing the older raccoon's trail..This afternoon I took the latest sample of diarrhea to the vet's and obtained the same results from analysis as before -- nothing. However, since the diarrhea has continued for so long, we decided to give him a cunning potion of neomycin sulphate and methscopalomine bromide -- guaranteed to kill whatever ails you, provided it's bacterial. Now why didn't I think of that before? I gave him a tiny drop this evening. His appetite seemed to lessen, but he's as energetic as ever if not more so. He is big enough now to reach up to all sorts of things that were previously safe from his depredations, such as the tablecloth on the kitchen table and drinks on the patio table. As I write at the patio table, he's staring down at me from the roof of the house. He seems to be cleaning out the gutters. I have no complaints about that!

Thursday 21 June. Higgins was up in the blue spruce again this morning, even though it was not raining. I gave him two doses of miracle antibiotic today, but haven't seen any bowel movements. I gave him a limited amount of blueberries (5) and a little apple along with his boiled egg, dogchow, macaroni, marshmallows, and formula. He seemed thirsty, drinking about 3 oz .in the morning and 6 oz. in the evening. He drank water as well. Tonight Higgins is cleaning out the gutters again. Maybe he finds and eats insects there? He also eats wild and cultivated cherries from the trees in the yard.He took a bath in the toilet again today. His sleep rythms are not yet routinized and he is still awake during parts of the day. This evening from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. while I cleaned my car in the road not far from his cage on the front porch, he trilled at me constantly, wanting to be let out. I appreciated his feelings but I really didn't need pawprints all over the car. That's partly what I was trying to clean off!!My theory about raccoon snuffling is that it is a means of clearing a smell out of the nose in order to smell the next scent clearly. Snuffling involves blowing air out of the nostrils then inhaling again. It's the exhaling you hear as snuffling.

Friday 22 June. Higgins ate relatively little today, mostly macaroni and cheese, and boiled egg. His paw pads are pink and rough from climbing around outside -- tenderpads. The black skin is almost worn through on the ball of each foot.He discovered a new twist on our "monkey on a branch" game this evening. Somehow, while wrestling, he grabbed ahold of his left leg and tail and rolled forward until he turned a somersault. This seemed to surprise him, so he did it again, and again, rolling over and over and over. He seemed to enjoy this immensely.I feel sorry for him spending so much of his time on his own, most of the day in his cage and most of the night in the trees. I wonder if he is lonely. He is missing all the cameraderie of brothers and sisters and all the care and attention of a real raccoon mother.

Saturday 23 June. Higgins ate little today, mostly boiled egg, and 6 oz. Esbilac. This evening he laid a huge pile of turds in the litterbox, normal-looking ones not diarrhea, so the wonderdrug must be having the desired effect on his digestive system. The volume of solid waste he produced leads me to wonder if he is finding food outside at night, as he has eaten little in the house..Having a raccoon who lives in the house at least part of the time is like having a mischevious elf who mysteriously appears and disappears in odd places. You walk into the bathroom, for example, attracted by a strange bumping sound, as though one of the linen cupboard doors were opening and closing by itself. For a second all is quiet, then as you look around, the door begins to bump gently open and shut by an inch or so as if little invisible ghosts were entering and leaving the cupboard. A few seconds later, sounds of a pattering of miniature feet comes from beneath the washbasin. Suddenly the middle one of three drawers beside the linen cupboard begins slowly to open all by itself, and just as suddenly slams shut. bClearly this is the work of gremlins, hobgoblins, or maybe fairies, since it is midsummer. Without warning, bottles of aspirin and liniment in the top drawer begin to rattle, the drawer pops briefly open, and the end of a large comb quavers into view then disappears inside. Within seconds the linen cupboard door is bumping open and closed again. Gingerly you open it further, half expecting to se some ghostly sprite from Middle Earth. But, lying there contentedly among the folded bathtowels with his legs padding against the door lies the fat furry tummy of Higgins Honeybear, who is playfully grabbing his feet and tail and rolling gleefully around. nwThe gremlin in the kitchen is noisier. Long after you are sure that Higgins has fallen asleep after a meal, serene peace has fallen on the house, and you are concentrating on some delicate operation like measuring a well-deserved gin and tonic, suddenly -- whizz! -- the bottom of the four kitchen equipment drawers zips open and you glimpse a brown shadow flying inside. mA troll? A leprechaun? A pixie? The tiny sprite flies up inside the space behind the drawers and scratches with miniscule fingers at the knives and forks. You hear spoons bounce and bash against bottle caps and wine corks. Then skewers and measuring spoons begin to jingle and jangle. Bam! The sprite has flown into the paper drawer. It slams open and shut. You glimpse a box of baggies unruffling into disordered folds and creases. Rrrip! The waxed paper detaches from its roll. Crack! Scrunch. Scrunch. Scrunch. The aluminum foil is crackling into rumpled pieces. The drawer opens a sliver and a piece of crinkled foil shoots out as if spit out in distaste. Zoom! The mischief-maker streaks out of the bottom drawer again, scattering tea towels and napkins in its wake. Out of the corner of your eye you think you see a blurred shadow flee the kitchen.

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