As Willard has to leave for work, his daughter, Theo, lines up interviews for a potential live-in housekeeper before returning to her job in Chicago.

During the summer Rascal starts causing trouble, including trashing up a local store and digging up a neighbor's corn patch.

Later that night, Rascal hears the mating call of a female raccoon through the window and tries to escape through Theo’s room, waking her and everyone else.

The next day, Sterling sets out in his homemade canoe and returns Rascal to his old stomping grounds, where he quickly locates a female racoon.

[2][3] Howard Thompson of The New York Times described the film as "genteel, sweet-natured and appealingly frail", but thought the story "gets a little patly philosophical in trying to thrust practical responsibilities on the young hero, Bill Mumy, and his carefree, widowed father, Steve Forrest.

"[6] The Monthly Film Bulletin stated: "Routine Disney boy-befriends-animal feature, agreeable enough on its own terms but as mawkishly sentimental as usual and with the additional embarrassment of a commentary by Walter Pidgeon which keeps insisting what a marvellous boyhood summer it all was.