Amir's Galant Rescue

Dec 9, 2012 On Monday evening Amir and I rescued two raccoon cubs from the overflowing storm sewer on our parkway here on the Near East Side of Maidson, WI, just after a huge cloud burst. He jerked the two huge heavy iron parkway grates out with two hammers that we hastily dug out of the basement. It was a super human feat as each weighed at least 100#~!

And just in time, as flooding water had filled them to the top and the just little raccoon noses were sticking out - they were otherwise submerged. The mom had been crying out, and it is a haunting sound! She was chest high in the water where the storm drain empties by the curb. Then she was clawing on the horizontal parkway grates which tipped us off that there was something in there. Then the civil defense siren went off and scared her so she ran away.

I grabbed them with a towel as they hung onto the grate and put them in our cat cage on the porch that we use for Aslan (my cat) in the daytime. We covered them up with a towel as they were soaked to the skin and shivering maybe from the shock of their ordeal. One just hid under the towel but the other one was more adventurous and watched us with curiosity. We gave them some apple slices but they seemed to be too scared to care much about eating. We got a couple of photos.

After the downpour we were able to reunite them with their mom when we put the cage out on the parkway with the door open. They didn't venture out on their own but were happy to nose out when mom arrived just as it got dark. I'm afraid many other animals must have suffered in the heavy rain. Several streets here on in Madison were flooded and a few were even closed.

More "heavy weather" is forecast and it has been storming every day at some point, the summer Midwestern weather pattern it seems. This is great to cool things off but the humidity now is killing!