The Raccoon Family

Martha's post about the raccoon reminded me of a Lessons in Life story I had done about the Raccoon Family.

Anybody who does for you regularly what you can do for yourself – anybody who gives you regularly what you can earn for yourself is robbing you of your birthright.

Ralph Parlette
1870 - 1930

I live in a suburb of New Orleans. It is certainly not a rural setting, but we have a wonderful collection of wild animals that make their home in and around our backyard. We have squirrels, blue jays, cardinals, doves, mockingbirds, sparrows and an occasional hawk that preys on them. And we have raccoons.

One Sunday afternoon I had thrown some stale bread out for the various animals and birds. My daughter and I were watching to see who would show up to feed on the bread. To our delight a mother raccoon with two young raccoons wandered into the yard and found the bread.

One of the younger raccoons found a slice of bread and was eating away. The other raccoon had wandered around in the vicinity but did not find any bread to claim for itself. So it walked over to where its mother was eating. The mother had the bread pinned down between her front paws. The young raccoon tried to partake in some of her bread.

Now here was the interesting part. The mother raccoon would not let her baby have any of her bread. She nudged it away. But the baby did not give up that easy. It walked around to the other side and tried again. And the mother nudged it away again. But the baby raccoon was persistent. It tired again. This time the mother turned aggressive and nipped at the baby.

My daughter could not help but let out a, “Look at that. What a mean mother. Can you believe what she did?”

We can learn a valuable lesson from the mother raccoon.

The mother raccoon’s actions of course seem rather cruel to us. Most adults would never think of feeding themselves first or denying food or anything else to their offspring. But we could learn a valuable lesson from her.

The mother raccoon knows that her job is to prepare her young to fend for themselves - to be self-sufficient - to be able to take care of themselves. And the longer they are dependent on her, the more difficult it will be when she is no longer there to care for them.

Are you helping or hurting those dependent on you?

All too often we take the opposite approach with our children, our employees and even some friends. In an effort to “help them” we do things for them that they should do for themselves. And unfortunately, the end result is that we are not actually helping them, we are actually hurting them. They become more dependent on us. When we eventually tire of supporting them, they are not able to function on their own.

Learn a valuable lesson for the mother raccoon. In the long run you help others most by helping them learn to fend for themselves. This often means making them find their own food.


Real life is in being things on the inside, not in getting things on the outside.

Ralph Parlette

Copyright © 2007 John Chancellor