Orphaned

I really....really....hate this.

When Tom went to pick muscadine grapes on Monday, he decided to also pull some of the vines out of the tree with the idea in mind that he could trim the vines and pick the grapes off of the vines that he pulls out.  Before they got started, Tom and our teenage helper, Reid, saw a racoon up in the tree.  For some reason, they decided that the racoon must die.  When I later asked him "why?", he said that if they left it there, it would have been bothering them or trying to get them while they worked in the tree.  My thought was that the racoon didn't want to be anywhere near them and would stay as high in the tree as it could.  Nevertheless, Tom came in and got his gun.  I heard two shots.

When I went out to help pick, I commented, "I hope that racoon didn't have babies somewhere that it was taking care of."

Lo and behold...baby.  In tree.  Beside dead mother hanging in tree.

I'd rather not have even known this, but Tom took a picture and loaded it on my computer.  So now I know and am haunted by it.  And now you know.  I hope it doesn't affect you the way it affects me.

I am not the kind of person that would join PETA or think that animals should never be killed for any reason.  Obviously, I am not a vegetarian and I do think that animals are here for us to make use of.  I eat meat, I wear leather and furs and I have no problem with that.  It's just that...I don't want them to suffer.  And it makes me so very sad thinking about that baby racoon seeing it's mother killed right beside it and not knowing what to do and not understanding why it's mother is not responding to it.

As far as I know, that racoon hadn't done anything to us.  Yeah, that one summer we had a racoon fishing our goldfish out of the water buckets and I didn't like it and I wanted that racoon out of here.  Maybe it was the same racoon.  I don't know.  But this just doesn't seem like a fair exchange somehow.