"Big, Sassy Raccoon" Ruins Park Slope Couple's Yom Kippur

The Yom Kippur Raccoon

Geeeeeeezus, people.

When Park Slope's raccoons aren't killing our cats or getting trapped in our kitchen cabinets, they're intruding on our holiday festivities! A FiPS reader celebrating Yom Kippur last Wednesday wrote in with an account of a raccoon that he found inside his home snacking on his cat's fancy feast tuna. Here's the story:

Last Wednesday was Yom Kippur, and after a long day leading services and teaching, I was happy to come home to "Break Fast" and make myself a martini in celebration of a job well done. Usually one invites friends and family to join in this ritual breaking of the 25+ hour fast.  This year we had another visitor. It was a big sassy raccoon, who came in through the cat door in the kitchen and then sauntered downstairs to the cat food and had himself a leasurely snack!

 I first discovered him when I walked into my kitchen and noticed wet, muddy footprints (there is a cat fountain in the kitchen and the water was very muddy -- as if the raccoon decided that a foot bath was in order). My cat Harold was in the kitchen meowing. He ran downstairs and I followed.  We have a mud-room off of our garden, which is where the cat's feeder (read: self-gorger) is located.  Even though the lights were off I noticed that there were broken pots on the floor and various other things that we stored on shelves.  As I walked toward the mud room, the raccoon's eyes were vsible and I realized that we had a problem.  

When we called 311 to ask for someone from animal control to come get our visitor, the idiot on the phone offered to send us a pamphlet on raccoons and then helpfully inquired if the raccoon was "foaming at the mouth." By that time I'd chased the raccoon out of the house by running at it with a mop. 

Not exactly the post Yom Kippur relaxation we were hoping for.

Just once I'd like to hear a nice raccoon story come out of this neighborhood, something that ends with, "When the wild raccoon jumped up onto the hospice bed, Grandpa immediately came out of his coma and lived another 20 years. And in those two decades, Rusty the Raccoon never once left his side." 

Anyone else ever deal with a raccoon in the aparment? Did you call 311 or animal control? Were they dicks about it?