Raccoons: Masked creatures who lurk around your house waiting for a chance to take the lid off your garbage can. Easily recognizable for their prison stripes— or not.
One out of every ten thousand raccoons is born with a genetic mutation that strips them of their black and grey signature colouring. Your chance of seeing an albino raccoon in the wild is about the same as being struck by lightning, 1 in 750,000.
Martin Ouellette is luckier than most, he not only saw one albino raccoon, he saw two— in his backyard.
Ouellette, watching the family of critters who’ve developed a liking for his oak tree, noticed that the regulation-coloured raccoons are protective of their lighter skinned brethren.
Protective, as if they know their lighter-skinned brethren can’t hide as easily as they can. Protective, as if they don’t care about a little pigmentation, or lack thereof.
Shameful, and sad, but often true, animals are more humane than we are.
I’ve never seen albino raccoons before. They almost look like possums.
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Didn’t even know they existed 🙂
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Hi, Aimer – I didn’t know about albino racoons before either.
Once again, I love the moral of your story!
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Pretty sad when animals in the wild are smarter than we are 🙂
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OH my gosh!!! We have a ton of raccoons around here and I’ve never even heard of that condition. Lucky indeed! Thank You so much for sharing the pics! And that is wonderfully sweet of them to be protective. I was blown away by a similar story of deeply profound caring this week. A pod of whales was trying to beach themselves here. The lifeguards at the beach were turning them around and trying to get them to swim back out so they wouldn’t die. 2 ended up beaching and dying later. It was discovered that one of the whales was sick. A friend, one of the lifeguard’s mothers, told me that a pod of whales won’t abandon an ill member and will risk their lives to stay with it until the end. Incredible. A couple of ginormous sharks followed the whales in with hopes of scoring a meal. I heard that’s how the second one died. Wheel of life and all that but man. Such mind-blowing sweetness. Thank You for this, Aimer! 🤗💖☀️
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Oh, such a nice story, but I wish it had a happier ending. 😉
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Right? Me too. 💙
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