Pepper the Raccoon Was Shot With a Crossbow Bolt. A Montreal Man Took Her In

Global News Canada reports that Louka Berman, in Montreal, found a seven-month-old raccoon at a construction site in May, injured by a crossbow bolt, named her Pepper, and nursed the baby back to health. The detail that stays with you is the bolt. Raccoons get hit by cars, tangled in netting, orphaned by tree work — a crossbow bolt is aimed. Whatever else happened on that construction site, this animal's injury was not an accident of urban life, which makes the response to it something other than pest control: a name, a convalescence, and months of somebody's attention. Recovery stories about wild animals tend to end with a release or a rehabilitation centre. This one ends with a raccoon who got well.