Woodside Wildlife Rescue in Pass Christian, Mississippi, has raised 76 raccoon kits in 2026 and typically cares for dozens each year. Paula Woodside, a former U.S. merchant mariner, founded the rescue in 2019 after helping rehabilitate a baby raccoon found aboard her ship. The Associated Press reported on the rescue’s work.
Intake starts with an attempt to reunite each kit with its mother
The animals arrive after being orphaned or separated from their mothers during storms, traffic accidents and other traumatic events. City animal-control officers and members of the public contact Woodside or rescue director Raquel Priest when they find a raccoon in need. Before accepting a kit, Woodside and Priest try to find its mother and restore the pair when that is possible, according to reports carried by the Associated Press and Citizens’ Voice.
Care shifts as the animals grow
The youngest kits spend their first weeks mainly indoors and are fed with bottles. They move to open-air pens after receiving vaccinations for diseases associated with cat colonies and dogs. Later, the rescue gives them opportunities to use the surrounding landscape, including forest, meadows, ponds and a nearby river, while staff guide them toward behaviors needed after rehabilitation, the Associated Press reported.
Those activities include practicing ways to obtain food, swim and fish, respond to warnings, climb and move through wooded areas while avoiding hazards. The goal is to provide experience that orphaned raccoons would ordinarily acquire from their mothers, rather than send dependent animals directly back into the wild, according to the Associated Press report published by Fox44 News.
Release is the intended endpoint
Woodside generally releases the raccoons about six months after their rescue. The animals are turned loose in a different forested section of the organization’s property, according to the Associated Press. The staged approach is intended to move them from indoor dependency to greater self-sufficiency before they return to the wild.
A similar progression is described at Millstone Wildlife Center in New Hampshire. That nonprofit, founded in 2015 by Frannie Greenberg and licensed by the state to work with mammals, keeps orphaned raccoons warm, provides specialized formula and gradually moves them from incubators into outdoor enclosures with water features and climbing structures. Northern Woodlands reported that Millstone generally releases its raccoons at 20 to 24 weeks old, a schedule broadly comparable to Woodside’s six-month timeframe: Northern Woodlands.
