Poor Raccoon :'(

Just a couple of days after recovering an injured skunk from their shrubs, I receive another message from the same residents near Lake Arrowhead last night about a raccoon just down the street who needed help and was walking in circles. It wasn't even the only raccoon in need of assistance case that I had waiting, and I was trying to finish up and go the first case when this one came in. It was going to be an hour or more before I could make it, so I asked if the mammal rehabber from Clay Co. could go get it, since she's also the permitted raccoon rehabber and is much closer. The female raccoon eventually laid down and was still there when the Clay Co. rehabber arrived. She ended up later at rehabber Sarah's house, and she called me about it earlier today. I went over to have a look, hoping that there might be something I could do to save the raccoon, but I also examined her and found that she was permanently blinded in both eyes from abscesses, and she was badly septic. Her right eye was completely opaque. I couldn't locate her left eye, and the infection was in her sinuses and lungs. Even had she survived the severe infection, she could not survive in the wild with blindness. :'( If she needed to be euthanized, I'd have preferred to do it myself and taken the care to make sure it was done as calmly and caringly as possible, in a quiet setting. But we lacked enough sedatives to put an 8lb raccoon to sleep, and the veterinarian Sarah uses was too busy to do it, so we were left with calling animal control to come get her as last resort. I knew the ride in the truck and then being brought into animal control would be stressful for her and probably loud and with dogs barking, and I didn't want her to be so scared when she got there, so I gave her what we could give her to ease her pain and keep her calm for her final journey. By the time this posts, she will be gone from this world. :'(