The Way of the Wild (Hawkes)/A Ring-tailed Rogue
Of all the wild pets that I have ever had any experience with, the raccoon is the most satisfactory. The raccoon is sometimes called the Little Brother to the Bear, and really belongs to the bear, or plantigrade family. Like the bear, he is very good natured and he also has some of the bear's drollery and his mischievousness as well. Many of the wild creatures such as the fox are so wild by nature that they really never become wholly tame. You may take a kit fox from the den when he is a month old and rear him by hand, but he will always have his fox suspicion of you. No matter how much you may pet him, his jaws will always come up to meet your hand. Although he may not bite you, he is always on the watch and always suspicious.
The raccoon, on the other hand, is a very lovable fellow and soon learns to like his boy master after a fashion.
When I was a small boy, we captured a couple of coon cubs and kept them as long as possible. Their pranks and the mischief that they got into made our place very lively most of the time. We caught them in May while mending fences. A small fox hound that always followed wherever I went on the farm treed something in an old birch stub and the hired man and I went to investigate. As the stub seemed rather rotten, we both put our shoulders against it and to our great surprise it went over. This surprised a family of raccoons as well. The two old raccoons fled with a great snarling as did the cubs. The hound caught one of the cubs and killed it, while the hired man and myself each caught a cub alive. The rest of the family escaped, but where they went I never knew, for they disappeared as though the earth had opened and swallowed them, but I presume they were just hiding near by in a tree.
The two cubs that we captured were very lively. At first they tried to bite and scratch, but seeing we did not intend to hurt them, they became quite docile. I took them home in a grain sack in which we had brought the horses' noon feed and later on made a cage for them with a small wire netting yard. Here they lived for a month, but they grew so rapidly and seemed so active that I finally decided that these quarters were too confining for them. In the front yard there was a small ash tree, tall and slender, so I built a chicken wire fence ten feet from its base which entirely encircled the tree. In this yard I put the raccoons' house and left them free to climb the tree at their own sweet will. This pleased them greatly and they chased each other up and down the tree with great glee. They often slept in the tree and really lived in it far more than they did on the ground.
I finally named the raccoons Tobius and Cochunko and we called them Toby and Chunk for short. All the boys and girls in the neighborhood came to see them, and they were often let out of their tree pen so that they might get a better acquaintance with them. Sometimes after they had been out of the pen for several hours at a time, it was hard to catch them. I always went to see that they were safe in the pen for the night.
They were as much alike as too peas, although Tobius was always a little larger, but each had the ringed tail, the black spectacles about the eyes and the ring about the nose. Their coats were thick and soft and they were always fat as butter.
They were not particular about their diet, but they were very careful to wash everything they ate, so we kept a wooden trough in their pen for that purpose. I suppose this is because of the raccoon's habit of washing fish as soon as he catches them.
Whenever I went fishing, I always saved the dace and suckers for the raccoons. Also when I dressed the fish, the heads were likewise saved.
In fact, the two usually stood by me while I dressed my catch and took the heads as fast as they came off.
One day when they were left outside, the pair visited a fish-pond kept by a neighbor a score of rods away and each caught a large trout. I suppose they had become tired of fish heads and suckers and wanted a taste of trout.
The last of July my grandfather, who kept the garden, complained that the woodchucks were eating the summer squashes. Some of them they ate, while they merely scooped out the seeds and left the shell of others.
A week or two later, grandfather said that something was bending down the sweet corn and then stripping off the ears. In fact, most of our first planting of sweet corn disappeared before we discovered the thieves. One day I caught them in the act. The thieves were Tobius and Cochunko. They would bend a stalk of corn down under the fore leg and then strip off the ear and eat it at their leisure.
They also visited the sweet-apple trees and ate many apples, but spoiled more than they ate. They finally became so destructive that we were obliged to place them again in the tree pen and only let them out for short plays when we could watch them.
After the fruit was picked and the vegetables gathered in the autumn we again let them loose. In fact they roamed about the place much as they liked. I merely saw that they were safe in the pen for the night.
About this time one of our chicken coops was raided and two pullets killed. One was partly eaten, but the other was left.
We at once decided that it was the work of a fox, but wondered why he did not carry off the dead pullet. So I set a trap that night and awaited developments.
To my great surprise, in the morning I found a rather small raccoon in my trap. The culprit looked like Cochunko, but it could not be he, for both of my pets were safe in the tree pen. I went to investigate and saw that Tobius was the only occupant of the pen, so it was really Cochunko.
He was merely caught by the toes and was not much injured, but his feelings were evidently badly hurt, for when I pressed down the
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trap and released him he made for the woods at his best pace. I followed after him calling and trying to regain his confidence, but he would have none of me. So I was obliged to let him go back to the wild.
So far as I know, Tobius never took any of our chickens although we lost others that fall. In the late autumn, we let him come and go just as he pleased. Finally about the first of December he also disappeared and I thought we had lost him for good, but I finally discovered him one day up in the sugar-house where he had taken refuge in a sap hogshead.
The hogshead was partly filled with leaves and he had a fine warm nest where he was sleeping away the winter. As I hated to lose him, I brought him to the house and chained him in a warm place under the shed. I put an old dog collar on him so that I was sure that he could not get away.
He did not eat as much as he had in the autumn and was rather sleepy, but occasionally aroused and came out to see us. In the early spring, one day when I went to see him, I pulled out the chain as usual but found no raccoon at the end of it. The chain had been broken close to the collar and Tobius had gone after his brother back to the wild.
I did not see him again until the middle of the summer. Then one day while I was hoeing corn, I discovered my pet coming slowly toward me. He was evidently half afraid, yet he wanted to see me for some reason. He would advance and then retreat and was quite uncertain what to do. So I sat down and waited, keeping very still. When he got close to me, I began talking to him just as I had been in the habit of doing.
I called him old Toby and said that he was a good chap, if he had run away. Finally he came up close enough for me to put my hand on him, but he soon retreated. Then he sat down and looked at me, I thought reproachfully. Finally he came up close and stood looking at me with a grieved, injured air. I wondered what was the matter with him.
I had often seen a dog act like that when he wanted something, but never a raccoon. Finally I remembered his collar and stooped down to see if he still had it on. I found it deeply imbedded in his fur and very tight. Here was the secret of his friendliness. The collar was choking him. I had put it on, and he thought I could fix it. So I carefully unbuckled it, and put it in my pocket. As he felt the collar slip from his neck, the ring-tailed culprit turned and scuttled for the woods without even stopping to say thank you. Once a dozen rods away he turned and looked back at me. I thought he was trying to make up his mind whether to return or to go back to the woods, but the call of his kind and the forest was too much for him, so he finally turned and disappeared in the woods.
This was the last that I ever saw of Tobius or Cochunko. They had gone the way of most of my wild pets, so I was not surprised. We had enjoyed them while they were with us and now missed them, but it was the way of nature.