There’s a good chance you’ve encountered a raccoon or two rummaging through your trash at some point. These wild animals, sometimes jokingly called “trash pandas,” can be something of a nocturnal nuisance to us when they get into our yards and into our stuff.
But it’s important to remember that they’re still animals just trying to survive — and sometimes they need a little human help. Recently, one man showed that you should be kind to all creatures when he stopped and went out of his way to help a trapped family of raccoons.
Robert Acton is a delivery truck driver for a business in Bradenton, Florida. Earlier this month, he was on his morning route, when he was stopped by a curious sound coming from a dumpster.
He looked inside, and found a family of raccoons.
It was immediately clear that the raccoons were trapped in there. They had presumably gotten inside in search of discarded food, only to be unable to get over the tall walls.
“There must’ve been 20 of them,” Robert told FOX 35. “They got in but couldn’t get out. Their momma taught them to get in the trash and they shouldn’t have.”
And it was a very dangerous place for them to be: soon a garbage truck would come by to pick up the dumpster, and likely not realize there was an animal family trapped inside.
So Robert decided to help them escape — and avoid a grim demise in a trash compactor. “You should always be kind to Mother Nature, so I’m going to help these little guys,” he said in a video.
He grabbed a pallet from his truck, and placed it inside the dumpster. Soon, the raccoon gang used it as a ladder to get out of the dumpster. One by one, they emerged safe and sound.
It’s clear that Robert really loves and cares for animals to do something like this — and this isn’t even the first time he’s done it.
He told FOX 35 that he had previously saved another group of raccoons from the exact same dumpster. (It’s a good idea to keep your dumpster lids and trash cans closed to keep animals from getting stuck.)
The video of his good deed has gone viral, with over 7 million views on Facebook.
Thank you to Robert for going out of the way to save this raccoon family! We definitely agree with you — you should always be kind to mother nature!
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