I consider myself lucky to have had a raccoon for a pet. In the early 60's an aunt and uncle left after a visit with us and returned shortly with two baby racoons. Uncle had accidently run over a mother raccoon and she died leaving two small babies. We kept one and aunt and uncle took the other one. I cannot recall what become of the one they raised.

It was doubtful at first if we could them to live as it required patience trying to find a mixture of milk and whateverwe could add to flavor the mild with to make it tase right. After we found a doll baby bottle to feed them it became a lot easier job. I had the patience as I always loved any kind of animal and Pudding Baby as I named ours sure did look awfully cute taking that baby bottle.

I still have to smile to myself when I recall taking my pet duck, and a kitten and Pudding Baby inside the house and playing with them. Our favorite game was I would pull a feather or some such object on a string on the linoleoum floor in the living room with all three chasing after it, sliding on the slick floor. The duck was such a comical creature chasing that feather and was always last in the line up.

As Pudding Baby got older, she started going on ocassional visits into the back of our place into the woods. The visits started lasting longer. My dad would go and call at the foot of a large oak tree that was hollow inside. PB would stick her head out that hole, climb down onto dad's shoulder and catch a ride back to our house and be there by the time I was home from school. It is hard to say who was more taken by that animal but daddy knew I would be heart broken if she was missing.

Pudding Baby was never mean and was a nice enough inside pet or my mother would have called it a varmit and thrown it outside. Another favorite passtime for PB was to climb on the back of the couch behind us and try to pick out all the bobby pins from my usual Saturday night of trying to curl my hair using bobby pins, taking two and crossing them over a round curl rolled up for my Sunday School look. Those tiny paws did wash food just as we all have heard raccoons do.

Of course the day came when she no longer came home. On rainy nights, we would hear her romping on the metal side of our rooftop. She was big enough she made quite a noise. Even those visits stopped. Daddy told me that he thought Pudding Baby probably had a family of her own by then. She was a masked bandit for sure. You could not hide peanuts in any drawer in the kitchen. You really had to invent ways to keep those strong paws from prying open doors to get at what she wanted to eat for treats.

I guess it is quite obvious I still love recalling my special pet and talking about her.