Why a camera?
So I can watch them without them watching me. A raccoon that gets used to people is a raccoon in trouble: it walks up to the wrong person, moves into the wrong attic, and doesn't live long. The whole job, from the day they open their eyes, is to keep them wild. I feed them, clean up after them, and get out. I don't talk to them, I don't play with them, and I don't name them. So the camera is how I keep an eye on them, and you're welcome to look over my shoulder.

#1, #2 and #3 came out of a chimney on the east side of town in May. Their mother went out one night and never came back, and after two days of crying in the flue the homeowners called the conservation office, which called me. #4 and #5 came a week later. Their mother was hit crossing the highway north of town, carrying one of them in her mouth, the way a mother raccoon moves her babies. The man who stopped found that one beside her and the other in the grass on the shoulder, and he drove them both to my clinic in a shoebox. Bless him.

At about seven weeks I started them on a mush of formula and soaked puppy kibble, and they wore more of it than they ate. Then dry kibble, fruit (grapes are the favorite, melon second), boiled eggs, corn on the cob, and live crayfish from the creek, so they learn to hunt for their supper. You'll see them at the water pan at night, feeling around in it with their front paws. Raccoons do that with their food whether it needs washing or not.

The cage
The first weekend in July they moved out of the tub and into the cage Howard built along the back wall of our garage: welded wire on a two-by-four frame, about six feet long and five feet wide and high, with a plywood floor and straw. Inside there's a canvas hammock, a wooden nest box up high, a dead branch to climb, a log, a heavy rubber pan of water and two steel bowls. The car has lived in the driveway all summer. The car has opinions about that.

At night the garage lights are off and a clamp lamp with a red bulb stays on. They don't seem to mind red light, and the camera can just about see by it, which is why the night pictures look like they were taken on the planet Mars.

When they're gone, the camera goes off till next spring.

1. Leave it alone and watch from a distance. Most "orphans" aren't. The mother may be moving her babies one at a time, and she often comes back after dark.
2. Don't feed it. The wrong food, or milk given the wrong way, can kill a baby animal.
3. Call a wildlife rehabilitator or your state conservation department (here, the Missouri Department of Conservation). Your vet's office can usually tell you who's nearby.
4. Never touch it with your bare hands. Raccoons can carry rabies, and a roundworm whose eggs are dangerous to people, children especially. If you have to move it, wear thick gloves and put it in a box, and wash your hands well afterward.
5. Don't try to raise it yourself. In Missouri, as in most states, it takes a permit to keep or raise wildlife, and for good reason.