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SAVE THAT RACCOON! by Gloria D. Miklowitz

SAVE THAT RACCOON!

By

Pub Date: May 1st, 1978
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

This begins in the wild with Raccoon sniffing strange smells and watching other animals rush past; later, feeling heat, he too flees, and ends up in a residential area where he fights off a dog in a garage, eats goldfish, bluejay eggs, and rosebuds, and gets into a house where he pulls clothing (""long soft things"") from a closet rack and turns on a water faucet (""two bright things""). At last Raccoon is trapped, taken away in a helicopter, and released in a more congenial, natural environment. Evidently even the publishers feared that the unaccented narrative might not stand alone, for they preface it with what amounts to a self-styled review: "". . . Told without sentimentality from Raccoon's viewpoint, this story depicts the animal's inventiveness in dealing with a variety of new and threatening situations and emphasizes the humane efforts of his rescuers."" Perhaps then--being neither a story with plot and tension nor a true representation of a displaced animal's typical fate--it could serve as a supplement to conservation studies.