If you’ve had experience with the outdoors or seen documentaries on TV, you know that nature can be pretty brutal. But sometimes animals surprise us by helping each other out.
Eryn and her family live in a home near a wooded area in Illinois, so visits from raccoons had always been something to be expected. One raccoon was a little bit unusual. As far as they could tell, it was nearly blind, at best able to see shapes and moving objects. The poor creature was always bumping into things and was easily scared (wind, snow, tall grass, birds). As a dedicated animal-lover, Eryn couldn’t help but give him something to eat. He became a regular, visiting twice a day and receiving delicacies like noodles soaked in cream of chicken soup and bits of hot dogs, pork, or ham. Incredibly, this went on for about five years (in the wild, raccoons usually live only two or three years).
One day, the raccoon brought a pair of surprise guests: two feral black kittens. Apparently the clever little cats figured out that a nearly blind raccoon had to have some easy source of food, so they followed him all the way to Eryn’s house. The kittens became fast friends with the raccoon, effectively becoming his body guards, following him back to the woods after feeding time! The raccoon continued to visit accompanied by his two unlikely friends for about eight months, until he presumably passed away somewhere out in the woods.
Eryn managed to tame the feral kittens (“that was painful”) and had planned to take them to a local animal shelter. “But after putting in all of that effort, loss of flesh and blood we kept them! And they now live inside with our HUGE other cat Squirt.”
Check out the video we’ve posted below and drop us a line in the Facebook comments to let us know what you thought of this raccoon and his adorable little bodyguards. Don’t forget to like and share!
