Raccoons rescued from dumpster

We found two young raccoons stuck in a dumpster:


They looked up at me with this “get us out of here” expression on their faces.  We thought they might be able to escape so we went to dinner.  Coming back they were still there, one of them had actually climed on top of the other trying to get up to the edge of the dumpster.

The smart thing to do would have been to call animal control.  Instead, with some encouragement from Twitter, I dived in to the dumpster and with the only protection being a hoodie wrapped around my hands.  I proceeded to attempt to lift them out.   I thought that I might be able to grab them by the scruff of their neck like a cat, but I found that this was a really good way to make them bite my hoodie and scamper in circles trying to elude me.  

Finally I was able to get one into the corner and push it up and over the side.  The next one was eager to get out trying to jump and claw up the corner, but he was equally eager not to be touched by me and so I had to put in some extra effort to corral him before pulling him to freedom.  Won’t forget these wild little guys.  Next time will call animal control, but this was a lot more fun.

Here is some video of the first few minutes of the rescue in which you can barely see anything, except for a few bandit faces…  My dog really didn’t help to calm the situation at all.

Now to shower the dumpster-stink off…