Earlier this month, Steve, an employee at Sun King Brewing in Indianapolis, Indiana, was cleaning a new shipment of kegs when he noticed someone tiny fall from a pallet.
Steve gently grabbed the baby animal and brought him to his coworkers. Brewery staff
puzzled over the visitor and eventually identified him as a raccoon.
“The reactions were, ‘Is it a bat?!’ ‘Is it a rat?!,’” canning deck employee Rick Franklin told The Dodo. “After closer examination, we knew it was a very young raccoon due to the markings on his tail.”
Team members named the raccoon Wee Mac, after a popular beer at the brewery. They worried for the baby, who was clearly too young to survive on his own.
“Wee Mac seemed very listless, and he was so small that his eyes were not even open yet,” Franklin said. “At first, we weren’t sure if he was alive, but then he did start to move.”
In need of expert help, Franklin contacted Re-Wilding Indiana, and soon animal rehab specialist Ann Shirley arrived to take Wee Mac into care.
Today, Wee Mac remains with rehabbers at Re-Wilding Indiana, where he enjoys formula feedings every three to four hours. The little raccoon is already gaining weight, and, assuming everything goes well, rescuers plan to release him back into the wild next spring, once he’s old enough.
Thanks to everyone’s quick thinking, Wee Mac is on his way to a much happier life in the wild.
