An Oakland man discovered a rare leucistic raccoon in a trash bin while volunteering at Lake Merritt.
Dana Berry’s shift picking up garbage by Oakland’s Lake Merritt started out pretty normal. Earlier in October, he and other Trash Falcons — volunteers who meet every Sunday morning in Adams Point to remove waste and debris from the 3.4-mile lagoon — did their usual sweep, clearing the wildlife refuge of loose shopping carts, toys and tape recorders. As Berry approached one cardboard trash receptacle and began dumping his haul, however, he heard growling come from the bottom of the bin.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had anything of that magnitude before,” said Richard Shirk, Trash Falcons co-founder. Out of their 190 missions, they’ve rescued baby turtles stuck on the wrong side of the lake, but finding a trapped baby raccoon and re-releasing it into the wild is a first for volunteers. Hope Swinimer, founder of Hope for Wildlife, a rescue center based in Nova Scotia, says that it’s a rare opportunity to find a “blonde” raccoon like this in the wild.
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