“As soon as I saw him, my heart broke.”
Published on June 12, 2025 at 3:15 PM
This week, a homeowner in Belchertown, Massachusetts, awoke to find a wild baby curled up all alone on his doorstep — a little raccoon who appeared in dire need of a helping hand.
And thankfully, he got one.
The homeowner was soon on the phone with Belchertown Animal Control Officer Sarah Byrnes.
“The little baby was cold and wet from the rain storm we had [the night before],” Byrnes told The Dodo. “As soon as I saw him, my heart broke. He was drenched and looked so scared. He was definitely too young to be on his own.”
Byrnes filmed as she approached the baby raccoon, doing her best to assure him that everything would be OK.
https://volume.thedodo.com/embed/1f02fbee7?autoplay=true&loop=true&placement=article&player_type=chorus&tracking=article:lede&privacy_consent=allBelchertown Animal Control
After wrapping the wet raccoon in a towel and placing him inside a crate, Byrnes proceeded to check if his mother was nearby — but to no avail.
“I called the Leyden Center for Wildlife Rehabilitation for advice,” Byrnes said. “[Founder Amelie Dricut-Ziter] advised me to bring the baby to her.”
Fortunately, despite being lost, wet and hypothermic, the little raccoon appeared to be in otherwise good shape. He’s currently in quarantine, where Dricut-Ziter continues to monitor his health.
“He’s doing fine,” Dricut-Ziter told The Dodo. “He’s eating, drinking and being a raccoon.”
Estimated to be just over 2 months old, the raccoon is still too young to fend for himself in the wild. So, Dricut-Ziter plans to care for him until he’s able to be released.
When the time is right, the raccoon will join the nearly two dozen other baby raccoons being cared for at the Leyden Center for Wildlife Rehabilitation ahead of their eventual reintegration back into the wild.
To help this raccoon and the other animals under the care of the Leyden Center for Wildlife Rehabilitation, consider making a donation via the organization’s Amazon Wishlist.
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Conservationists Notice Something Strange About Wild Animal’s Horns
“[He] could have easily rubbed it off …”
By Ashley Ortiz
While trekking through the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana one day, conservationist and wildlife photographer Dr. Jess Isden spotted something unusual about an animal she’d often encountered. She was used to seeing remnants of spider webs on male gemsbok, a species of oryx — but the one she saw that day was unlike any other.
“We saw several gemsbok with webs in their horns, but none quite as thick and dense as this!” Dr. Isden wrote on Instagram.
The conservationist and her colleagues were shocked to find the gemsbok’s horns layered with thick spider webs. They could see spiders living in it, whom they expected would soon be evicted once the gemsbok inevitably rubbed his horns on some brush.
But days later, when they encountered the same gemsbok, they realized nothing had changed.
“[W]e saw them over several days with the web still intact,” Dr. Isden wrote.
You can see the webbed gemsbok here: