Oh Man....

So I've mentioned the raccoon families that live in our general area and that the little ones "trill" for their Momma.

Well, over the last few months, one of these little ones, no longer tiny, but still young, has gone from trilling for Mom to yelling for Mom.  A lot.

I think before they ripped down the greenery next door I saw this little one as a small thing crying for Mom and Mom looking frazzled (anthropomorphism!) and like trying to be like "I'll be right back, I need to get food, just shhh, it's ok, shhh" and the baby still just crying.

I'm assuming it's the same youngster all these months later but y'all?  This little dude is waking me up and I'm not finding it so cute anymore.

My understanding is that some baby/young raccoons miss their Mom when she goes off to find food.  And when she's out of sight the young ones cry out for her in a rather large way.

Now when I first heard this I got concerned for predators, as in this is a noise that would give away your location to a predator and "invite" them to come eat you for breakfast, but I realized that we're not exactly in the wild or in a forest here and so generations of these little creatures haven't lived with the threat of a, like, owl or mountain lion or whatever other natural predators might be in the woods.

But man oh man this little one.  So never-endingly loud.  Like in a big way.  Seriously.  Like I've been woken up in the middle of the night a few times by its screaming and on Saturday night it woke me up a bunch, from like about 3 am on.  And then when I was up on Sunday morning, I could still hear the little guy going crazy missing Mom again in a different area (like not close to my window but still close enough to be heard, maybe where their den is.)

My neighbour heard the noise one evening not too long ago and was worried that the little guy was trapped, but then she looked outside and saw it was just.... hanging out by itself crying and yelling for Mom.  Le sigh.

I have no idea how long this phase/stage lasts, and so I have no idea how long baby might be waking me up with MOOOOM WHERE ARE YOUUUUUUU!!!!???? screams but yeah, this weekend was a lot for whatever reason!  

Thankfully it's not non stop, Mom does come back, I assume, from time to time (I have to hope with food better than whatever's found in garbage bins.. sigh) and baby/youngster calms down but times like Saturday night/Sunday morning it seems pretty excessive. 

I have to wonder (human style) if Mom is stressed by this, like I imagine her trying to go gather food to feed herself and this little guy and hearing the screaming and yelling and being like "oh come on Junior, give me a break, I'm hungry and you *know* I'm coming back, we've done this a bunch of times before!"

Edit, about five hours after writing the above post: So.... I should probably maybe possibly delete this post because I went out a few hours after writing this post and when I came back there was a gentleman standing in our parking area.  I gave him a polite smile and he asked if I lived in this building, I said yes, and he explained that there was a baby raccoon stuck in the garbage he was trying to get out.  OH NO!  All that complaining I'd done assuming the kid was just missing his Mom, he'd actually gotten himself stuck at the bottom of a pretty empty garbage bin!  Well, long story short, with a bit of adjusting of the broom the fellow had brought we got the little guy to climb up and out (he was too terrified and exhausted to move until the broom was right by his feet at which point he valiantly attacked it!) and once he'd rested a bit and then cleared the area we removed the broom and closed up the bin and we chatted about how this gentleman who lives across the street has done it a few times over the years and i said that yes, I had at least once as well!  And we talked about how the poor thing had been screaming for 10-12 hours on and off.  I feel badly that I assumed he was fine and just lonely when in fact he was scared and stuck and feeling helpless.  Waaaaaah, me big meanie (well I just didn't know better and had no reason to go looking in a garbage bin!  As the neighour said, "did no one need to throw garbage away?"  Guess not, eh?)