the call of home

‘‘Ready for another animal, Anita?” my brother-in-law asked me, setting down a cardboard box inside my doorway. “This baby raccoon needs a mama.”

I pulled back the flap and looked inside. A tiny masked face peered out. “She was wandering around the brickyard,” he said. “She didn’t even fight when I picked her up.”

I lifted the raccoon out of the box and held her. “Poor little baby.”

“I’ve been calling her Margaret,” my brother-in-law said.

“Margaret…” I cooed to her. Since girlhood I’d taken in animals—cats, dogs, an orphaned lamb, even injured chickens. But this was my first wild animal. The timing was perfect. I had no one to take care of. My