New York – Carol Aiello used to spot the intruders only at night, prowling her backyard or scurrying along her street in Glendale, Queens. But one morning not long ago, she caught one of them staring at her from a neighbor’s gutter and all of a sudden — perhaps for no reason other than seeing those black-rimmed eyes so close and in broad daylight — she panicked.
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“It was nothing like what you see on TV or in children’s books,” said Ms. Aiello, 51. “It was big, it was ugly and it was scary.”
Raccoons may be wild animals, but they’re no longer a rarity in the city. They seem to be appearing in greater numbers and, like true New Yorkers, seem to be behaving much more boldly.
From Queens to Brooklyn and the Bronx, New Yorkers are coming across them in usual and also in unusual places: on stoops and rooftops, by bird feeders and garbage cans, on the edge of above-ground pools, even inside kitchen drawers.
These encounters between humans and beast have become so commonplace that City Councilwoman Elizabeth S. Crowley thinks it is time the city takes a tougher stand. She has introduced a bill requiring the health department to remove raccoons from public and private property whenever someone asks the agency to do so. Right now, the city removes raccoons only if the animals are thought to be rabid.
“If a resident considers a raccoon on their property to be a nuisance, they should contact a licensed wildlife removal service or licensed private trapper,” Susan Craig, a spokeswoman for the health department, said in a statement.
But the question a lot of people are asking is, when does a nuisance become a menace? In an interview, Councilman James Vacca said with more than a hint of exasperation in his voice: “Years ago, people thought this was cute. Well, it’s not cute when a raccoon is scratching at your door at 2 in the morning.”
And that, he said, is what raccoons have been doing in his district in the northern Bronx.
Last month, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, a raccoon suffocated to death after somehow finding its way inside a kitchen drawer. Two other raccoons tried to break into the same house, but couldn’t figure out how to get through a glass window.
Officially, it’s hard to gauge the extent of the raccoon problem, in part because not every raccoon complaint called into the city’s 311 help line is logged. If homeowners call about raccoons on their property, for example, they are advised to call a private exterminator, explained Nicholas Sbordone, a spokesman for the Department of Information, Technology and Telecommunications, which operated the service.
But the number of homeowners who have called 311 so far this year requesting brochures on how to remove raccoons has increased – to 2,410 from 2,155 during the same period last year.
Not even elected officials are immune. Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan of Queens said that seven raccoons sauntered among the guests at a Fourth of July street party in Ridgewood, mystifying children, terrifying parents and nearly ruining the celebration. Assemblyman Michael Miller, also of Queens, said that he stopped to make a call from his driveway the other day and a pair of raccoons ran under his car.
Sherry Ortega, 42, who lives on 68th Avenue in Glendale, not far from Ms. Aiello, said raccoons so often drank from her pool she was too scared to let her sons swim at night. “To the raccoons,” she said, “our pool is the local watering hole.”
Al Costello, 81, who lives nearby, said that a raccoon killed one of the stray cats Mr. Costello had fed for years. Another neighbor, Mary Borzelino, 73, said she no longer spent her evenings sitting on her stoop because of the raccoons.
“I call, ‘Hey!’ but all they do is turn around and look at you like, ‘Are you talking to me?’ ” she said. “You yell, you spray them with water, you turn the lights on, but they’re not afraid.”
At a news conference on Monday, Ms. Crowley said that she attended a neighborhood meeting at Ms. Borzelino’s home last September and raccoons were the chief complaint among the 40 or so people there. Complaints have also been phoned in to her office as well as the offices of Mr. Vacca, Mr. Miller, Mr. Nolan and several other elected officials.
“The city really should get a handle on this before we have Bed Bug 2,” Ms. Nolan said, referring to the tiny insects that continue to spread across the city despite the efforts of exterminators and legislators.
Ms. Crowley’s bill would force the city to devise a way to humanely dispose of raccoons and not, say, kill them, as authorities did to hundreds of geese in Prospect Park that were deemed a potential threat to airplanes. “The department of health would capture the raccoons and move them elsewhere, maybe to some rural area,” she said.
Jessica Scaperotti, a spokeswoman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said that when it came to raccoons, “the city’s focus is on containing the spread of rabies.”
Ms. Aiello, the woman who had a face-off of sorts with a raccoon, said that she had called 311 to complain and also Animal Care and Control, which is in charge of removing raccoons, but only if they are believed to have rabies. But help arrived only after two police officers from the 104th Precinct station house drove past and decided to tackle the task.
They picked up a hose and sprayed the raccoon with water until it scampered out of the gutter, slid down the side of the house and ran toward nearby railroad tracks
Do raccoons eat bedbugs?
Personally I would prefer racoons over bedbugs, as long as they stay out of my kitchen drawers!
…,Kinim, Arov, …
it used to be rats coming out of our sewers seems even they have now gone upper class
City people make a big deal about everything. Leave the little critters alone, they don’t bother anyone. I live in Monsey and they are all over the place. They don;t bother anyone other than trying to get into your garbage cans at night.
#5 : Racoons are rodents and have become big pests. Many of them are rabid. Aside from that, they invade garbage cans and spread litter all over. They can figure out how to open most trash cans. They leave their droppings all over fence posts, patio tables, and the roofs of sheds. Perhaps to you this is not a bother, but it is to most people.
I can deal with raccoons – we have skunks in Upper Manhattan and they make their presence known.
They are so cute. Bedbugs are not!
#6 Raccoons are most assuredly NOT rodents. They are more closely related to bears. There are rabid raccoons, but they are not a serious public health hazards. For the most part if you police your garbage bins and don’t corner them they aren’t a problem.
Here in the West we have seen a cycle of raccoons, possums and skunks. I’d rather have the raccoons than the skunks any day.
Raccoons may be cute but they can be dangerous and destructive.
Flatbush has been infested with Possums lately. They look like huge rats. They run around in the dark mostly and can be seen in the yards of the nicest houses. They don’t discrimenate. They make squeaky sounds when chasing each other. It’s disgusting.
#11 – Possums are shyer, slower, much MUCH dumber and less likely to cooperate than raccoons.
# 12 your right, saw a opossum fri nite,on E. 27 st they seem to have some sort of nest there,because Iv’e seen them many times in that block. this is crazy. out of control.