Page 10 - Animal Kin

we couldn’t find her. We returned again the next morning. Still no Loudey. Our mom explained that wild animals will al- ways want to be wild and that we shouldn’t be sad. But we were a little sad and Victoria seemed to miss her too.
One of our special weekend adventures was getting up before the sun and going to wildlife reserves to bird-watch with my mother. Just as it was getting light, we would drive very slowly through the roads, often two of us on the roof of the car, looking for birds. We had only one pair of binoculars and we passed them around. When it was my turn, I always scanned the trees for that familiar little black mask of a rac- coon- our baby who had gone back to the wild.