...when she was a baby last year.
Isn't she just the cutest little love button?! We became a "foster family" for Willow and her sister Halo went to a "forever home" with my co-worker. The two littermates were found along a highway after the mamma had been struck by a semi. They both were about three weeks old and had to be bottle fed.
Halo is an indoor only (will not even set a foot outside!) raccoon and will likely remain spoiled for the rest of her life! She's the second raccoon that their family has raised so they have had a lot of experience!
Willow, on the other had, decided that she wanted to be an inside/outside baby. She wanted to be wherever hubby or I went. Or she would follow the dogs. We did a lot of research and (since we live in the country, on several acres with a pond and lots of trees, and within a quarter of a mile of a major state river) decided that we would raise Willow to be released back to the wild. For the first month or six weeks she slept in an old dog cage. Then she began sleeping in bed with us (imagine 2 adults, 2 #70 labs, three or four cats and a raccoon all in one cozy bed!) We allowed her as much freedom as she wanted and she began to use the doggie door to go out early in the day and come in and make her rounds before bedtime and grab a bite to eat. Then at Thanksgiving she came in and gave us all a good look-over, opened all the kitchen cupboards, scoped out the pet food dishes and (guess she didn't like anything she saw!) went right back outside! That was it! She has been on her own since then and I've worried about her so much now that we have snow on the ground! I'm sure that she's fine and holed up somewhere. I'm just anxious to see if she'll come back in the spring with kids.... :)
I could tell you more about her, but this is the condensed version!
Mind you, I'm a photog nut! I have a gazillion and one pictures of Willow from the day we got her and started bottle feeding her, first bath, playing with the dogs, in the kitchen drawers, eating, eating, and more eating!, outside: in her favorite tree, in the pond, eating ice cream, playing more......I could go on, but I haven't figured out how to make a collage and I wouldn't want to put so many pictures on here to bore everyone. I'll just post a few and try to behave myself!
Hope you enjoy them!
~Dawn~
