Three Raccoons

Most species of wildlife have evolved ways of compensating for very high annual mortality.
Interference by humans to save any one individual will do little for the population one way or the other.
– North Carolina Guidelines for Wildlife Rehabilitators

We hoped at first
that they weren’t orphaned,

that their mother would come
in night’s comfort to claim them.

That she would disappear
them to the treetops by morning,

tuck them into a branched cradle
and whisper buds of the coming spring.

A day passed before our hound spotted them
and cleared a fence she’d never even tested.

She bit and shook before I pulled her off,
her silk ears closed to my screams.

I should have let her finish the job—
it would have been quicker. Instead,

I scooped the scrambled kit into a shoebox
and watched its labored breaths

until the man with a gun arrived.
He broke protocol for me—

drove the shoebox elsewhere before
he pulled the trigger.

I don’t know how the second died,
only that I found it under a cloud

of black flies. The remnant
sibling kept watch;

even the quiet company of death
is better than being alone.

I left an offering of stale cat food
and something like a prayer,

but a day later
the third racoon was dead, too—

spread across the road
like a dropped blanket.