Raccoons aren’t the type of animals most people expect to see in a living room, but they’re commonplace in one Saskatoon woman’s home.
Hayley Hesseln, an agriculture professor at the University of Saskatchewan, has been taking care of raccoons for years.
“Some people think this is great. Other people think they’re a nuisance and a pest, and they’re invasive and they should be destroyed,” Hesseln said.
The animals aren’t pets for Hesseln. She’s an animal rehabber. She helps injured or young animals and nurses them back to health.
“The ones we deal with… they’re orphaned and injured as a result of human-wildlife interaction,” she said.
Hesseln spends thousands of dollars each year on special food and milk for the raccoons.
“I have a permit to raise wildlife, but the idea is that all the wildlife are returned to the wild. I think owning exotic pets isn’t necessarily the best thing for the animal,” she said.
“It’d be much better if these little guys were raised by their mother in the wild.”
She will release her current group of raccoons back into the wild once they mature.
