I do not know Sandy the raccoon’s story from beginning to end. I suspect that he was born in a den in a hollow tree somewhere in the swamp behind my grandpa’s farmhouse. He was orphaned at an early age when his mother was killed by a passing motorist on State Route 511 and was rescued by my cousin and adopted by Grandpa. As for his ultimate fate, the question will never be answered, although for nearly seventy years it has plagued me. All I know is that he came to us as an infant, a tiny ring-tailed orphan with an unlimited curiosity and a unique and creative sense of humor.
It has been said that we humans relate to our fellow creatures in one of three ways, that there are some we love—horses, dogs, cats and such—those we fear and loathe—often snakes and other serpents—and those we eat, in our western culture cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys, sheep and goats. Sandy seemed to have bridged the gap between pets and prey animals. As long as he agreed to share his life with us, we were able to at least begin to understand the viewpoint of a wild creature.
Sandy loved nothing better than to send my grandparents’ toy terrier Teddy, who otherwise seemed to fear nothing, fleeing in mock terror with one of his ferocious snarls, a game that neither ever seemed to tire of. On the other hand, when he would hear the far-off barking of a farm dog or hunting dog, he would growl menacingly and scoot up the trunk of one of the huge maple trees on the front lawn and could not be persuaded to come down.
His paws, resembling monkey paws, were never still. While seemingly fascinated by humans’ activities, his paws were busy exploring anyone’s ears and searching their pockets. Life was a never-ending game for Sandy. Upstairs above the hog pen there was a storage area for corn to feed the livestock. Secreted away there for more years than I know of was an old horse drawn sleigh. Sandy would spend long afternoons there playing with the bells, fascinated by their ringing.
Sandy was not so much a pet as an emissary from the wild world that existed just beyond the lamplights on any night. I only knew of him to flee from perceived danger one time. A thunderstorm blew up one August day while Grandpa was sitting on the porch swing entertaining himself with the antics of Sandy and Teddy. When a lightning bolt struck the house, Sandy hightailed it for the barn and was not seen again for weeks as he lurked somewhere among the dust and cobweb covered farm implements stored there. I would see his footprints in the dust where he had ventured out onto the hay wagon at night to visit his food bowl. Ultimately, he returned, offering no explanation for his absence.
I was in my early teens the summer of Sandy. At the time, my dad and grandpa were my ever-present role models. In my eyes, they could do no wrong, never be in error about anything. To this day, I harbor much the same sentiment.
Grandpa was wrong about some things. He gained most of his knowledge about the world from the King James Version of the Bible. He had come across the words “four corners of the world” somewhere in Holy Scripture and argued that, therefore, the world was flat. However, he was right about just about anything that mattered. But then, he was wrong, too, about the hawks.
In my young world, Grandpa’s small herd of mixed Jersey and Guernsey cows regarded us with indifference, like the almost feral cats who lived quietly in the barn. Then there were the big friendly draft horses who would submit to having their soft noses petted in return for handfuls of oats. And there were the dogs, not only Teddy the house dog but Mitty and Lead, the two coon hounds, with their deep, throaty, almost musical voices.
The wildlife present among the pastures, fields and woodlots of my world were there to be harvested in season, always in accordance with Ohio’s hunting and trapping laws. For a small farmer who had not shared in the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties but had shared in the lean years of the Great Depression, a muskrat or raccoon pelt represented a much-needed dollar they would otherwise not have had. I grew up as a hunter and knew no other way of life. I gave it up after bagging my last pheasant sometime around 1974, a year or so before Dad and my Uncle Edgar sold the farm.
On a dark drizzly November evening, while out hunting with Dad and Grandpa, one of us shined our flashlight into the top of a towering hickory tree where roosted two huge “chicken hawks,” actually magnificent red tails. I had worked all of the previous summer to purchase my new Colt revolver, and, believing that I was ridding the farm of two predators who had no other role than to make off with Grandpa’s poultry, I quickly dispatched the two regal birds. That hawks and other raptors save a farmer considerable money each year because of the rodents they kill was a truth none of us was aware of at the time. What fell was dead weight, downy feathers clotted with blood. I continue to be troubled by the event to this day.
Ever since, hawks have followed me everywhere, not as a symbol of retribution but of grace. I have on more than one occasion had great hawks alight on an overhanging limb perhaps a yard from my astonished face and stare me right in the eye before drifting gracefully off over their woodland world.
With the advent of autumn, Sandy began to experience the call of the wild and would vanish for ever more lengthy periods of time. Finally, it seemed that he was gone for good, living his happy life somewhere in the wilds from which he had come.
One autumn night, Dad and Grandpa and I took the dogs Mitty and Lead and my fierce little rat terrier Buddy out for a run. Along the fencerow down in the pasture there was a large puddle with a sapling growing near it. There had once been a gas well there, and at night you could smell the leakage. On that night, the joyful barking of the three dogs alerted us that they had cornered something. By the time we arrived, the three, two of whom were trained specifically to hunt only raccoons, were tearing into their desperately fighting prey. It was over in minutes. The dogs were just being dogs. No raccoon was any match for the three of them.
Was it Sandy? My dad later mused that the animal had acted as though he expected us to rescue him. Does it matter if it was Sandy or some other raccoon? The image of any creature being torn by dogs will haunt my dreams forever. Sandy may have ended up as some kid’s Davy Crockett hat.
Malcomb Muggeridge tells us, “Everything, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.”
I have some idea about the message of the hawks, but less about the message from Sandy.
It all happened long ago. I no longer drive up the old familiar county road to Grandpa’s farm, have not for many years, will not ever again. All the ground above the floodplain has now been permanently marred by the construction of ridiculous suburban style houses. The farm now lives on only in memory.
My enthusiasms include fly fishing, natural history and wilderness backpacking. In 1996, I published privately a memoir, Trails of Laughter/ Trails of Tears, featuring my wilderness adventures and misadventures.I serve when needed as a Licensed Eucharistic Minister in the Episcopal Church.
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