Usually every morning I take a walk around the yard looking at what's blooming and such. For some reason yesterday I didn't, and boy do I regret it.

Around 3 pm, I went out for the mail and see that the side gate is open so I walked over to close the gate. And there I found a raccoon hanging upside down with it's back left foot caught in the arbor. That poor thing had to be dangling there at least all day and probably some of the night. My heart just went out to her (?).

Now, before I go on, let me say that I have a background in vet medicine and back in the early 80's got two of the three vaccines you need to be protected from rabies. I'm also not stupid. Please bear this in mind, lol.

I was thinking I would just push her caught foot up to release it and she would run off happy. But as I got closer, and she allowed me to get up close and personal, I saw that it was swollen up on the fence side and was very stuck now. I also noticed that many of her toes were gone and/or bloody. I'm guessing she tried to bite them off to get out of this situation.

But I tried anyway and pushed up on her foot. She snarled, and tried to get away, but she made no attempt to hurt me. But it was pointless, she was wedged tight and the swelling made it worse.

But when she did move to get away, I noticed that things were worse than they originally looked. I saw she had an open break, around her knee, with the bone protruding through. My heart just went out to this poor thing, dangling upside down, with all her weight on a broken leg for probably over 12 hours. Can you imagine the pain? and she never made a sound.

I ran for the phone to call animal services but on the way decided that wasn't good so called my vet instead. I told them what was going on and asked what to do. They put me on hold while they asked around. While on hold, I decided to help her get her weight up off the broken leg. So I grabbed one of the big plastic bins I was using for laundry and propped it up sideways under her so she could rest on it and take the pressure off her dangling leg. She did not like this and tried at first to get away from it. But I looked her straight in the eyes and told her I was here to help and I'm sure she understood as she then let it hold her up. She rested her head and chest on the top of the sideways bin with her leg still stuck in the arbor.

Still on hold at the vets, I then went and got a bowl and filled it with water. With just one hand (other still holding phone) I held the water up for her and she drank and drank and drank. The bowl is probably no more than five inches across, and her snout was at least four inches long, so she could have easily bit me to shreds, but she didn't, she just drank. At one point she took one of her front paws and put it on my hand as I held the water for her. I know in my heart she was telling me thanks. I let her drink all she wanted.

As she's drinking I'm thinking this phone call is taking way too long and this poor creature cannot hang here while I wait for someone to drive over here and help. So I leave her and run over to the neighbor next door with phone still in ear.

She has to get some shoes on and I run back into the garage to get the dogs put away. Which brings up this point...how could all my cats and dogs not have alerted me to the fact that there was an upside down raccoon stuck in the arbor no more than two feet off the ground???

I put the dogs away and look for something thick to protect my arms from her bites when I try to remove her. First I grabbed a blanket, then see one of those bath mats with the rubber backing on it and decided that's more protection.

I get back over to the side and now my neighbor is there. I give up on the call to the vet and hang up. I tell her that I'm going to pull the raccoon "up" to release the leg and she needs to have the bin ready. I then put my hands on the back of the rug and grab the poor thing around the hips and lift up. On my first attempt, she does not come free. The foot is swollen and will not come loose from the space. I tried a second time and still nothing. Nothing was happening each time I'm raising her body up as it's only her body that moves and not the lodged foot because of the broken bone, and each time I move her, I can see the bone jutting out of her leg move, while the remaining part in the arbor does not.

Finally I realize I'm going to need to apply pressure directly to the foot part. But I don't have three hands, the two I have are holding her around the waist. So I sorta twist her so that my right hand is closer to the stuck foot and use it as a lever to push the foot up while still holding her around the waist. That gets it and she's finally free. Throughout all that, she snarled twice, when I first grabbed her, and that was it. The rest of the time she just hung there.

Once I had her free I moved to lower her into the container. I took her to an animal emergency clinic.

I called them back around 8 last night and they said she was still being observed, but it looked like she had neurological damage as she kept putting her whole face in the water bowl. I told the receptionist she had to be very, very, dizzy as she spent 12-18 hours upside down.

I called again this morning and a different receptionist said she was not there now but she didn't know if that meant they euthanized her or sent her to a rehab place. She said her leg was broken in more than one place. I know that type of break would require expensive surgery, so I'm thinking they euthanized her. My heart just went out to this poor thing, I can't get over how much pain she had to be in for so many hours.

This is the arbor she was dangling from. She was face down, back side to the walkway, toes pointing towards the fence. See the whiteish area on the closet edge bar? that's skin tissue.

Here's a closeup of where she was caught. Her foot was stuck between the big edge and the small design work, being held up by the horizontal bar, in that little three sided square area. If you look lower you can see the blood from the break around her knee, and look lower and you can see the scratches from her front paws trying to free herself.