It’s the short tale of a regretful raccoon.
When Bianca Jose and Toby Williams woke up and thought their Park Slope brownstone had been robbed.
Drawers opened, silverware strewn about, oatmeal spilled everywhere. Jose took a breath looked around, and then saw the culprit, a raccoon, his head sticking out of one of the drawers.
“I stood there for a second”, Jose said. “Thinking is it alive, or dead?”
It turns out the raccoon was dead, a victim, perhaps, of his own making. Williams thinks the raccoon must have tried to squeeze out of the back of the silverware drawer “but its head was out and it couldn’t get its body through so it must have just strangled itself.”
A tear in one window’s screen seems to be the only sign of forced entry. Then, when Jose retraced the raccoon’s steps, she noticed something that tug on her heart strings.
"I think I went through every emotion: 'Oh, my God its so cute lying there.' [Then] I looked outside on the fire escape and there was a little baby and I started to think, poor thing it was trying to get food for its little baby," she said.
Animal control experts say raccoons are not all that unusual in Park Slope. Their advice, is to make sure you don’t leave food outside, even for your pet. If you see one in your house, don’t touch it, rather call the Department of Environmental Conservation -- then wait for the inevitable news crew.
“I used to sing jazz and I used to sing professionally”, Williams chuckled, “and a couple of friends were like, 'I cant believe this is the thing you’re going get famous for.'”
