Stumpy Junior

In the previous post I mentioned how we'd not seen the Baby Bandidos for several days. Of course they showed up that very night.

Mom was there too. And, as is her custom, tends to stay toward the back of the garden.

Unlike the youngsters, she is much more wary of the house environs.

Recall that in the Baby Bandidos post I noted that when the group came back there were only two babies, one was missing.* As you can see there are now again three. But there is still something missing. Look closely at the raccoon with its back to the camera in the image directly above. It is missing its tail.

It is also noticeably smaller and weaker than the other two. It was sad watching it struggle to climb up and down the tree to get to the peanut butter (we've since made sure to put peanut butter closer to the ground). We hope it survives out there.

This was at least the third raccoon in the yard with tail issues. We had one last year with an obviously broken and mis-healed tail, one with an unnatural kink in it. We wonder what it is that is causing such damage.

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* Of course, it could be that there are two family groups, one with three pups and one with but two.