Raccoon Medicine ~ Part 2

Thanks to those of you whose have followed my heartbreaking story about our dying oak and how its removal displaced the raccoon family living in it. Between my knee acting up and Tim’s ongoing mobility issues, it’s hard for either of us to get down to the greenbelt below our house on a ravine to check things out firsthand. Our neighbor Ken, who has been harvesting the wood, has been giving us the ongoing raccoon report.


We left 4-5 feet of tree stump up to allow time for the raccoons to relocate. It took the tree service a couple of weeks to get back to remove the remainder. (We waited to call till the raccoons cleared out.) It was difficult to see the raccoon completely that had died, as it was deep in the stump in a place that could not be accessed before removing more of the wood around it.

Good news/bad news depending on how you look at it. It was not one of the adult raccoons that died, but rather one of the babies—and, blessedly, it was not by the saws. It appeared he or she died naturally.

I thought this was particularly poignant to learn right after I posted Incubation/Hatching, where I discussed how not all eggs hatch or make it into the world.

Once more, the raccoons provide an amazing punctuation to my learning. Now I’ll have to go sit with myself and figure out which of my eggs are not supposed to hatch—and quit sitting on them.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your healing words, because this incident “got to me” so deeply.


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Photo Credit: THE RACCOON by Vladvitek Dreamstime.com