Stowaways

Last Saturday I encountered an interesting surprise. I was checking the Willows dumpster to make sure it had been emptied the day before. I looked in and saw a cardboard box filled with fur. Uh oh... I banged on the side of the dumpster and the fur started moving. The box was small enough that I knew it wasn't a bear, so I wasn't too worried. After a little more banging, out popped a groggy raccoon head, with an expression on its face as if to say, "hey, cut out all the racket; I'm trying to sleep here!" I got a piece of wood and reached in to poke at the box, hoping the raccoon would come out. Instead, I saw two balls of raccoon fur! They had been all curled up together, asleep in the box.

I'm used to seeing raccoons that are so large they look like medium sized dogs. These, however, were quite small. I was afraid that maybe they had been separated from their mom. I called one of my maintenance guys and asked him to bring over a wooden plank to put in the dumpster so they could climb out. The process that followed was quite entertaining! One of them was pretty eager to climb out, while the smaller one was more timid. They were crying back and forth to one another and I can only imagine what their conversation meant. In the end, both of them got out and ran off into the wilderness, hopefully to find their mama.