A walk down memory lane: 1965 photo of woman with pet raccoon resurfaces online

It sounds like something out of a Disney princess movie — a girl, who also loved nursing baby rodents back to life, walking her pet raccoon down a city street.

But that was life for young Susan Knox — now Harrison — of Upper Hainesville, about 50 kilometres northwest of Fredericton.

And given how many decades have passed, you can imagine her surprise when a photo of her, at the age of 16, walking Mickey on Queen Street in downtown Fredericton, resurfaced on the internet just last week.

"That was a shock," Harrison, now 75, said of the moment one of her friends told her the photo was floating around online.

The archive photo, which originally appeared in the Daily Gleaner, was posted to social media on the Associates of the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick Facebook page and later on the N.B. Heritage page, where it garnered hundreds of shares and comments. 

Seeing the photo brought back memories of that day in 1965 and of the year she spent with Mickey. 

Harrison said she got the raccoon after her dad and a neighbour went to an abandoned farm where her neighbour was the caretaker. Inside, they found three baby raccoons that had been left there and decided to keep them.

Her neighbour took the two females, while Harrison's dad brought home the baby male.

"I was the only one who could handle him," Harrison said, describing Mickey as a "devil." 

She had to bottle feed Mickey at first, which wasn't difficult for her as she was used to taming wild animals.

One time, Harrison said she brought home a baby mouse, which her mother fed with a doll's bottle. And Harrison even raised an injured Blue Jay for 16 years, much to the disdain of her cats.

Mickey's trip to Fredericton

For the most part, Harrison played with Mickey on their rural farm, but one day, she decided she wanted to take Mickey into Fredericton.

"Dad, can I take the raccoon to town?" Harrison remembers asking.

"I could talk him into … anything."

While walking Mickey down Queen Street that day, Harrison said the staff at the Daily Gleaner spotted them out the window and hurried down to snap a picture.

She remembers being excited to have her photo in the paper.

But as Mickey grew, he developed quite the attitude, Harrison said.

She remembers one day, she saw her dad was carrying two pails of milk up from the barn, complete with a thumb dripping blood because Mickey wanted a drink. 

And when Mickey outgrew his harness, she bought him a new black leather one. When trying to put it on him, her boyfriend at the time, who later became her husband, was bitten by Mickey and carried that scar for life.

That later led the family to release Mickey on a game reserve.

But Harrison still remembers him with fondness.

"You had to keep your eye on him," she said.

"[Those] little hands were just like little black leather gloves. They could open anything."