At around midnight yesterday, I heard a shrieking sound in my back alley. All my cats became alert and somewhat frightened as it is not often that we hear such sounds especially at that time of the night.
After a few minutes, the shrieking sound did not subside, and the more I listened, the more it sounded like an injured bird. The first thought that came to my mind was that an alleycat might have caught a bird and had left it injured (or dying) in the alley.
So I opened the back door and went out to have a look. There was nothing in the alley. But as I looked up the neighbour’s house, I spotted a large animal which looked like a raccoon. I wasn’t sure if it was a weasel or a raccoon, but my son, who was watching from upstairs, said it was a raccoon because of the markings on its face.
The big raccoon was scuttering to and from the air-cont unit, around the tubes. It was making that loud shrieking noise. And then, I realised why. There was a baby raccoon amidst the air-cont tubes. The baby was safely nestled on the ledge, but it appeared to be scared and it was trying to get out from the entanglement of tubes. I looked closely and the baby was not trapped. It was probably just scared and did not know where to go, or what to do.
The big raccoon (I assume it must be the mother-raccoon) was encouraging the baby to get out of the ledge and crawl up the wall so she just kept shrieking and going up and down the wall, from the ledge to the roof and back again.
I stood there watching quite helplessly. It was too high for me to help the baby raccoon even if I got up on a ladder from the alley. Furthermore, my presence might frighten the mother and the baby and would have made the situation worse. So, I just stood there and sent them good wishes and prayed that they would find a way out.
After about 10 minutes of more shrieking, the baby raccoon finally got the message and managed to get away from the tubes. It then followed its mother up to the roof.
Ah…all’s well that ends well. I wanted to get my camera to take a shot, but decided to watch the entire episode to make sure the baby got out safely.
I didn’t know there were raccoons in my neighbourhood…. Perhaps it was a civet cat. I remember there was a notice of a lost civet cat posted around my neighbourhood some months back.
But I’m glad everything went well.
Two of my cats, Bunny and Indy, were with me, and they appeared to be very concerned. They both watched the whole episode from the kitchen.
On hindsight, it made me reflect on the love of a mother (human or animal) and also reminded me to be thankful for having hands. The mother-raccoon had no hands (just paws), so she could not reach out to pull the baby out.
Never take things for granted. Let’s be thankful for having hands.