Animal Rescues

Yesterday my friend called me from his home in Barrington Hills and told me to come by to photograph this baby raccoon that he found by his door of his house. I was not sure what was really going on and looked into this because it did not seem like normal behavior with the mother leaving it or something that may happen with a baby deer for example and found out that most likely something was up. I drove by and brought my camera and got out of the car without my equipment to first see what was going on. I noticed that this little guy was in really bad shape and upon closer inspection noticed he was covered in maggots. Sorry for the squeamish out there, but that was really the case and was really tough for me too. But this little guy was in desperate need of help and knew something needed to be done asap. I made a couple of calls to my friends over at the Flint Creek Wildlife rescue over by me and they confirmed this was not normal obviously and probably not a very positive sign for this guy recovering from this. I proceeded to get some gloves and cue tips and water to carefully remove as many of the maggots that were on him and clean him up as best as I could and then put him in a box and covered him up so no more flies or anything could prey on him. I made a ton of phone calls to various rescues, but being a Sunday hardly anyone was answering their phones. Most rescues do this out of their homes and on the side and this is something that is to be expected, but it still is frustrating when you really do not know what to do. I finally got a name and number from my friends over at Flint Creek and they told me to call a 24 hour vet in the area that would take the raccoon and fortunately there was a lady there that was very familiar with raccoon rehabilitation. I brought him to her and dropped him off. She looked at him and we both knew it did not look good, but she reassured me that she has seen these guys coming back from worse which was a nice positive thing to hear. I know she took her home and tried her best, but the little guy did not make it and passed away this morning. At least he is no longer suffering and we gave it our best.
On a good note, today I was driving back from a photo shoot and I noticed a car stopped on route 14 and blocking traffic and noticed there was a turtle in front of her car crossing the road. I made a u-turn at the next chance I could and pulled up behind her to help and noticed it was a pretty large snapping turtle and knew I had to be careful. I managed to grab him and get out of harms reach of him turning and trying to bite and carried him off to safety across the road. People seemed to be alright with the fact my car was in the middle of a highway stopped knowing I just did the right thing and went out of my way to help an animal. :) That was all in a 12 hour period....lots of excitement without even trying. A.