This is a long shot but our only hope to keeping Ringo our sweet baby raccoon. Ringo was an orphaned baby raccoon and she was approximately 6 weeks old when she fell into our hands. she was found in someone’s shop barn and was up in the loft with only one sibling. the mother was killed and they didn’t know there were babies in the loft. she was small and frail when she arrived in our care and now a month later she’s super engaged in playing with her toys, loves snuggling with us, laying on her heating pad to keep her warm, and interacting with us and our families. in this month of having her she’s made a tremendous amount of improvement,  been trained to use potty mat’s, weaned off her bottle, and now she’s into eating solid foods. we couldn’t be more proud.

The only issue is that we didn’t have a permit when we got her for we didn’t know we needed one, and she’s from the “wild” as we didn’t buy her off a breeder. I asked what our options were to the odnr and they said there were none and we have to give her up. they said they’d try and find a rehab for her but after all this time she’s been with us she’s not allowed to be released into the wild. so what’s the other option? they want to put her down! when we called the odnr out he changed topics and got defensive so we ultimately both know that’s what they planned on doing and others have agreed that that’s what WILL happen to her and our sweet girl doesn’t deserve to have her life stripped away in such a terrible manor.

we know she’s an exotic animal, but in our eyes this little girl deserves better than to just be killed. any signatures will help us stand up for Ringo’s livelihood and all of the other wildlife animals that have the same fate.