Sometimes Mother Nature uses disease to control the population of wild life. She culls the weak, young, and the old, leaving only the strong to insure the survival of the species. This I understand, but it's difficult to understand why she has chosen this particular time to do her deed... Caught in the middle of this is our Nursery's raccoon population... We released them at the same time that she decided to spread a fatal virus among the wild population in our area....Canine Distemper is one of the fatal viruses that raccoons are highly susceptible to... Our babies have all been exposed and are now dying as a result..... There is no cure and in most cases it's fatal....

As of this entry, in spite of all our efforts over the past three weeks, we have now lost five of our original eight kits.... We blame ourselves for this loss because we failed to challenge a system that turns it's back on those who try to help wild animals... A system that make getting the necessary vaccines, medications, and professional help to treat them as difficult as humanly possible.. Because we failed to protect our kits, we have had to watch them die in our arms one by one....and I've had the horrible pleasure of digging the graves for their final resting place..... The only good to come of this, is that we now know how to get done what need to be done to protect any raccoons we get in the future......