‘Never saving a raccoon baby again’: Woman’s roadside raccoon rescue leaves her with spoiled yet adorable new pet

A word of warning for you all; the following video is likely to cause an unconquerable desire to venture out and adopt a raccoon for yourself, which is likely an impulse that we’ve all felt before.

But trust me, folks, after seeing this, you will be a goner. The paws and the munching below are a heart-melting double whammy that not even the stoniest spectator can withstand.

In 14 seconds, TikTok‘s @storytoldd relays a motherhood story for the ages. One moment, she’s relenting to the curiosity of a baby raccoon who took a magnetic interest to her car, and the next, she’s begrudgingly-but-gladly bowing to the whims of her new little live-in prince, who simply can’t get enough of caramel corn (which, of course, does not grow in the wild, so this is a whole new flavor for him).

What else is there to be said, really? Absolutely every good thing in this world can be represented by a tiny raccoon holding hands with his new mom, and further by the joyful munching of sugary snacks by a critter who has yet to grasp the concept of a non-nocturnal guardian. We have all won today.

Nevertheless, it would be wise to not get too ahead of ourselves despite this apparent revelation on the domestic capability of raccoons. According to Critter Control, wild raccoons are adapting more and more to urban environments as time goes on, and that causes their otherwise natural fear of humans to decrease. As a result, they tend to tip more towards the former on the “fight or flight” scale, and will waste no time attacking a human or their pets if it senses danger to itself or its young. Moreover, raccoons tend to carry a variety of diseases that are dangerous to humans, including rabies, roundworm, leptospirosis, and can cause even more illness in cats and dogs.

In other words, @storytoldd’s new furbaby was the result of the planets aligning immaculately for them both. Because this raccoon is so young and is apparently without a mother, it doesn’t appear that he had much time to internalize the “wild animal” essence that he would have otherwise been destined for, and can instead easily learn the ways of the “house raccoon.” By all appearances, he seems to be disease-free, too.

So if you did get your hopes up for a pet raccoon, maybe just live vicariously through these two instead; he’ll make sure to crunch his popcorn extra loudly just for you; I’m sure of it.