Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

Agile and sure-footed, raccoons are as much at home in trees as any squirrel. If they decide to leave a tree they can leap from alarming heights without apparent injury. Twice I have seen desperate raccoons weighing at least 20 pounds do this. In one instance the ’coon jumped from a limb over thirty feet above the ground without even having the breath knocked from him, leaping beyond the dogs and climbing a large den tree nearby before they could take him. In the other case, a very large raccoon made a twenty-foot high dive into a river and escaped.

John Madson, Stories from Under the Sky