The rogue raccoon made its unwelcome entrance by crashing through the bedroom ceiling of the single-family home rented by Patricia and Lavanda Gilbert around 6 a.m. — showering the couple in their bed with sheetrock.
The normally nocturnal critter landed with a bang that woke everyone in the Springfield Garden house.
“I heard ‘boom’ and he came crashing down,” said Patricia Gilbert, 48, a home health aide.
“Another foot over and he would have landed right on top of us,” she said.
Gilbert and her husband were awed at the size of the furry rascal.
“He was big, he was big like a 2-year-old kid,” Gilbert said.
“He was about 15 to 20 pounds,” said her husband Lavanda Gilbert, 53, who works as a cook.
A shocked Patricia Gilbert screeched at her husband to “get him” before she opened the door and let the frightened animal into the living room.
“I abandoned ship, I'm not gonna lie,” Patricia said.
She shouted to her son, Zyair, 12 and daughters Zkyr, 13 and Misher, 16, to stay in their rooms.
Gilbert and her husband holed up in the bedroom and dialed 911.
The drop-in guest is one of seven raccoons squatting in the attic, Gilbert said.
“Every morning I hear them up there, ‘thump, thump, thump,' they're scurrying around,” she said.
“They start moving around up there around 5 o'clock in the morning,” she added.
The uninvited varmint ran amok in the rest of the single-story, ranch-style house, she said.
“He was out there knocking my plants over, he was looking in my turtle tank at my turtles and then he climbed up to the front window and tried to crawl out,” an outraged Gilbert said.
She made a run for the door when she saw the masked marauder trying to open a window. The cops rolled up as she got outside.
“The police were able to open up the window a little more and he climbed out and ran around the side of the house,” she said.
The tubby creature made a mistake by trying to waddle his way back onto the roof. That’s when cops unloaded.
“They pepper-sprayed him,” Gilbert said. The offended animal ran and hid under a nearby car, she said.
[Seriously? They pepper sprayed the raccoon because it was trying to escape? Idiots.]
But that was the extent of assistance from the NYPD, and calls to 311, Animal Care and Control and the ASPCA yielded no offers of help, Gilbert said.
The ASPCA and Animal Care generally don’t respond to private residences for wild animals unless they are sick or injured, according to the automated messages on their help lines.
A man Gilbert identified as the owner drove up in the early afternoon, but he refused to speak to a Daily News reporter.
Public records indicate the house — which neighbors said had never been well maintained — is owned by Arthur Vendryes, who didn’t return multiple calls for comment.
According to the Gilberts, the raccoons got into the cubby area about five months ago and set about nesting.
The family said Vendryes told them he won’t pay to remove them or fix the chinks to prevent them from coming back — and they’ve had enough.
“I have to sleep out here in the living room tonight because I can't go back in there,” Gilbert said.
Her husband, who patched the bedroom ceiling Friday afternoon, said it's not fair to his family to stay in the slowly-crumbling house.
“I just want to get out of here, it's stressful for the kids, they can't sleep well at night, hopefully we'll be out by the end of the month,” the cook said.
(NY Daily News - Oct 11, 2013)
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