I ‘ve been so saddened by the death of this precious little one, and the new loneliness of the sibling wherever he is. I’ve been asking the Lord to watch over him wherever he is, and wrestling a bit with the question of eternity with animals – having been raised to understand that animals do not have eternal souls.

I’m comforted a bit by texts in Isaiah 11 about animals living in heaven with our Lord, as well as images of horses in the new earth in Revelations… inklings of some sort of possibility that animals and eternity may coexist in some way.

Thanks for sharing your story. The Lord has comforted me with the thought that at least this little one had someone lovingly caring for him when he died. And all in all, though there is uncertainty about animals going to heaven, it does comfort me to know as you said, that “if God knows when the mountain goats give birth (Job 39.1), then God must know when the raccoons die.” God loved that little raccoon more than I did, and I because of that I can trust Him even though I don’t always understand.

Lately in the mountains my wife and I were reading a story about a deer like Raffi. I don’t remember the title. A woman wrote the story, a true story, a long time ago. It was a beautiful story, like yours here.