I was so very touched by everyone's condolances and kind words concerning Vernon's death. I enjoyed sharing him with you, and I wish he could have lived to grow up and go on his own.

I get a little embarassed when people say how wonderful it is what I do...I am just like all of you, who love animals.

Anyone who works in animal rescue, whether it is wildlife, parrots, horses, cats, dogs, exotics....or even if someone just adopts and brings home a stray or feeds the birds or anything like that...knows that it can be emotionally draining, altho it is rewarding.

I want to tell you a happy story, about a little surprise I got this week.

We bought this place in '96, and even tho we didn't move here until our daughter went away to college in '99, we moved the horses here and used to come down here every day and all day on the weekends.

Many raccoons live on Chocolate Bayou. I raised waterlilies. At one time I had probably one of the largest, if not the largest, private collections of waterlilies in the US. Raccoons and ornamental ponds do not mix. In order to keep the raccoons out of my waterlilies, I started feeding them.

We used to come down here and put out the food for the raccoons and sit and watch them. We got to know many of them as individuals. I named some of them and most of them learned their names. I had some real favorites....like one named Upsy Daisy. When you said her name...she would stand up on her back legs. We trained her to do that by throwing her a treat. One evening she came up to the group and I guess she didn't know what was going on. She stood up to look at us, and my husband threw her a treat. She ate it, stood up again, and got another treat. I started saying "Upsy Daisy" when we threw the treat and she learned that very quickly. I could even call her, if she wasn't with the group, and she would run up, come to the group and pop up.

None of the other ones did that.

And, there was one named Rascal, that used to come sit by my chair, but my favorite was one named Cancun...named that because she got in the trash...but spelled like Cancun in Mexico. She was always getting into mischief. If she could get in the house, she would go to the pantry and steal whatever she could. Like a loaf of bread, or bag of cinnamon rolls or a bag of powdered sugar, and then she would run up a tree.

She raised two or three litters of babies in the hollow tree in the yard. One of my favorite memories of her was her sitting in the tree, leaning back in a fork, holding her hand about her head, holding a branch for support and her babies all clustered around her, sleeping.

One evening a pack of dogs came through the place and killed several of the raccoons and scattered the rest. I continued to put food out, but nothing came to eat it. After that happened, I never again sat out to watch the raccoons. I couldn't stand to know that the ones that I loved so much were gone. I always left out the food, but for at least

7 or 8 years, I never watched the raccoons. Someone even came down here and stole my light out of the tree, and we never replaced it, so when the sun goes down and it gets dark, you can hear the coons, but can't see them.

I never missed a day of putting out the food, and I knew that something came to eat it, and sometimes I'd get a glimpse of them, and I knew they were there by the bayou where I always fed them, but never again did I watch them.

I started rehabbing about 6 years ago, and I raised 3 baby raccoons, and even tho a couple of them are still here, and I am out near where I feed the coons every night when I feed the possums, still, I never sat out to watch the coons. One of the raccoons I raised, Audrey, comes to me every night to get a treat of yogurt, and I see the little coons that come to eat out of a bowl nailed up in a tree, and I can see the line of coons that come to eat along the bayou, but I never paid any attention to them. Every year, there are baby coons in the hollow tree...I can always hear them. This year is no exception...have a late litter in there now.

My husband changed jobs, and now he is a captain on a towboat. He is gone for 2 weeks at a time. When he is home, he helps me with the feeding, and we have started sitting out by the bayou again, watching the raccoons. We don't give them treats any more and a lot of the young coons are always back and forth around us...but except for Audrey and a baby coon named "Puff" because he has a short tail, we

haven't paid enoug attention to them to know them apart. Well, there is one that I released here named Pia, and we know her, but not most of them.

We did notice a big, old coon and I started calling him "the Old Man". There probably aren't many mature males that come to be fed because they are territorial. I just assumed this was a male due to his size.

When my husband isn't here, it takes me at least 2 hours to feed the animals. I was feeding some of the possums a week or so ago. The cages are across the driveway from the yard and under a huge live oak that has branches that go all the way to the ground. I looked up, and The Old Man was sitting in the tree just above me. I looked...and it isn't a male coon....it is a female coon. A big, old female coon. She looks old, but she is in good shape. It is Cancun! Once I really got a look at her, I could tell.

I spoke to her and held out some grapes and she growled at me. Probably saying, "Keep your damned grapes...where have you been for so long!" Every evening now when I am doing my chores, she comes around. She isn't friendly like she used to be, but it is definitely her. She has been here all along. Because she has always had plenty of food, and lived in a protected place, she has lived a long time. She has to be at least 12 years old, and I think that is a long time for a wild raccoon.

That's an awfully long story to tell something, but I was so happy to see her. I am going to get my husband to put up a light in the big oak where we used to sit by the bayou...so I can watch the coons again.