They hollered and wailed and climbed the sides of the cage mercilessly chittering at me to come get them, PLEASE!!! I sat a few feet away and didn't flinch but my heart was wrenching. I watched them walk all in it and get it all over the place except for in their mouths. When all the gunk was spilled out of the pans or thoroughly coated all over them, I took them out and bathed them in warm water in a tub on the patio table. They didn't like that either which was surprising because I thought they liked water. I guess they like playing and feeling in the water, not being dipped in the water.

It was hard not to shove a bottle in their mouths because they had to be hungry. There wasn't anyway they could have gotten a full meal out of that fiasco. But after drying them off, which they didn't like either, I schlepped them back into the larger cage to settle down and get some much needed sleep. The little critters stayed awake for another hour roughhousing all over the cage. Thought for sure they'd zonk out pronto.

At the twilight feeding, I was determined to do it again. So, I readied the dishes--same stuff as before only I put dry baby cereal in the formula and the rest of the jar of baby rice cereal with applesauce in the one pan. The other pan had the same puppy chow mixture. They didn't favor it but I had to keep introducing it to them since dog chow is what they are fed mostly after they're weaned. How they find dog chow in the wild, I don't know.

I went inside so that they wouldn't protest so much. They still protested but they seemed a bit more interested in what I had offered them. Mostly, they went around still trying to find a way out of the cage. At one point, Midge was hanging from the top of the cage and lost her foothold. She fell right into the pan. She came up with formula spread over half her face and side. What a pitiful sight but after recovering her sense of dignity, she starting licking at the mess on her legs. She realized that "Hey, this is food" and then she went over to the pie pan with the formulated gruel in it and began licking it out of there. Just like the people on the raccoon list said she would. Boy, did that feel a breakthrough moment. Marge had been showing interest before that happened but it seemed like when Midge started wanting to lick it up that made Marge want it even more. Heartened by this show of acceptance, I quarted some grapes and went out, tossed them in, and went back in the house. From the window, it looked like they were eating them down, too. Cheyenne, the smallest one of that trio, still wasn't doing too well with it all, though.

After they emptied the plates--on the ground and on and in themselves--I did the washup and dryup and put them back in the big cage. Cheyenne, though, I kept out. She got a treat. She got five ounces of formula from the bottle. I figured she needed it because she hadn't taken too well at all to the weaning that day. She still fiddled with the bottle a bit but that's because there were a lot of noises going on around the perimeter of the yard--a late evening lawnmower, dishes rattling in the house, dog barking a couple of yards over. But she did settle down and drank all the milk. I love seeing them have a fat belly after they eat. That's what makes it rather hard about this weaning process. They're not having that fat belly fill up like they do with the milk. But once they get over this hump, they will.

This morning, out came the pie pans full of stuff again. In the little cage they went and, lo and behold, there wasn't any protesting. They had become adjusted to being in that little cage again. I let them alone and went back in to watch from the house. All three of them went right to the formula mixture and were licking it up. Wowie! Zowsers! Hooray! I mixed up some more formula adding bananas to this batch and put that out there for them which is a trick in itself. You have to be mighty quick to pick three fast and furry bodies off the side of the cage and get the lid shut before they can scramble out. Finally, I got the lid shut again and they investigated the banana mixture. They seemed to like the smell of it and took licks of it. I think they were also eating some of the puppy chow mixture. After an hour I took them out, bathed them again, and got them back inside their home base. I wasn't sure of how much they actually got in their stomachs but I figured that they must have gotten some of it in. Not too much looked spilled on the ground.