The camp kids found a baby raccoon yesterday. I don’t know exactly what the details were of finding it. But before the church service started down at the outdoor chapel, my daughter was walking toward the house holding the raccoon wrapped in a towel. The next thing I knew we were looking for syringes to feed it the very little amount left of heavy cream I still had in the fridge.

Again, I don’t fully remember, as I was not fully with it. To no surprise at all, Sunday was pretty much a rest day for me. The hog roast came and went. The boys went down to the beach to swim. They came back when I was on the phone with my mom and sister who I’d called to pass the time with after I’d woken up from a nap feeling like I still couldn’t understand why it was like this.

Today I started feeling better again. They brought another raccoon home. Later I heard them talking about another and I told somebody not to bring home anymore. I’d already been receiving texts about how to feed an orphaned raccoon, someone had already gone to the store and bought kitten formula, and they’re saying that after nine more weeks or so they could wean and eat solids.

No one seems to understand that you can’t just assume these now three raccoons are going to live, that they are probably all now very dehydrated and are going to slowly starve without being able to nurse no matter how much liquid we’re able to get in them. I went to Walgreens and bought a few syringes, soft tissues to use for where the mother would normally help them.

I’m going to try and call an animal shelter or something tomorrow. They use their voices and climb around feeling. When they nap again you feel relieved, just as you did with a human baby, except you know their bellies aren’t full like they need to be. You would feed them if you could. There are frozen mangoes in the fridge. You know God cares for his creatures great and small.