Mama Come Back!!

I’m very sad today about my coon family. As predicted, once the pheromones were in the chimney, the mama coon began to relocate her babies. According to the Critter Control man, she had four babies in there about the size of a football each. They stay in the nest for 10 to 14 weeks.

This morning at 2:00 she began the relocation. Richard woke me at 4:00am having been awake since the start of the move. She was still going at it. “How many babies are in there” Richard asked. “Four,” I said. “I think there’s more like a dozen,” Richard replied. “She’s been doing this for over two hours.”

And boy was it LOUD. The crashing and the chattering. Yes! Raccoons TALK!  I couldn’t believe the experience. The mama would come for one baby at a time. When she arrived you could hear her grunting and the babies chirping and cooing. When she left, they shrieked. There must have been 6 different sounds they made and different pitches for each.

Richard finally got up at 4:30 to get coffee and he went outside. He could hear the babies she was in the process of relocating down along the side of the yard. Dawn was coming and I feared for the last baby left in the chimney. It sounded like mama came to get him 2 or 3 times but kept leaving. We wonder if she was having trouble getting him out.

Anyhow, she left him. And he’s be crying ever since. I swear it sounds like he’s crying “mama” over and over. We have hope that she’ll come for him tonight, but if she doesn’t, the Critter man will take the baby to a refuge where he’ll be nurtured until he can be released.

I am so distraught over this. I wish I had left them alone.

And another thing, it’s become quite apparent that our dog, up from Alabama, who we googled and thought to be a mix of lab and red bone coon hound is NOT a COON hound. She got into bed with us when it all began. Not a bark, not a look…nothing. She’s simply a rescue dog from the pound and still in need of rescuing.