A rare baby white raccoon was found by a cleanup volunteer in Lake Merritt this month, and naturally, the critter was found inside a trash receptacle.

A volunteer group called the Trash Falcons makes it a weekly project to clean up trash around Lake Merritt every Sunday morning. And they’ve found some unusual items before. But on one recent Sunday, one of the Trash Falcons found himself a trash panda (a.k.a., a raccoon) and a rare and unusual one at that. NBC Bay Area reports that volunteer Dana Berry found a rare form of white raccoon at Lake Merritt, and he got pictures and video of the little character who was digging through a cardboard trash bin.

"I looked down and there's a furry little guy looking up at me with these big eyes and big teeth," Berry told NBC Bay Area. "At first, I thought it was an opossum. I kind of looked at it and then thought, 'OK, let's bring it over to a safe area.'"

SFGate has video of the encounter, where the raccoon was found in the trash box. Berry positioned the box on its side so the little raccoon could run away, and it scurried up a tree.

That outlet also explains that a white racoon is actually a raccoon born with a condition called leucism, which is similar to albinism. According to the National Park Service, leucism is “the partial loss of all types of pigmentation,” which “causes white coloration, white patches, spots, or splotches on the skin or fur.”

It’s not the first time a white raccoon has been seen around Lake Merritt. One was spotted in 2018 and posted to Reddit at the time, and litter of baby white raccoons was seen there in 2021. This raccoon may be one of the three baby white raccoons at Lake Merritt that an Oaklandside reader spotted last month, and got video of those raccoons with their mother, whose fur was normally colored.

Related: Photo Goes Viral of Santa Cruz Raccoon That Got Stuck Face-First In a Roof Hole [SFist]

Image: trashfalcons via Instagram

A mother raccoon who was reportedly trying to rescue her kits from the other side of a hole in a Santa Cruz home's roof got herself comically stuck, ass up, and a local animal shelter publicized the photo.

The raccoon was probably making quite a racket after getting herself into this predicament, and as Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter explained on Facebook, the homeowner contacted the nonprofit Wildlife Emergency Services for help.

"Knowing that time was critical, they instructed the citizen how to push the raccoon through the hole so it wouldn't suffocate," the shelter says.

So I guess the homeowner did the rescuing?

Rebecca Dmytryk, the director of Wildlife Emergency Services, explains to the Chronicle that she was too far away to respond quickly so she instructed the homeowner to somehow widen the hole to allow the raccoon to drop through. And she suspected that the raccoon had chewed the hole bigger in the first place because her kits had already gone in there — but the situation isn't clear.

The mother raccoon was also lactating, and a white liquid (milk) can be seen spilling out of her on the roof.

The animal shelter only said, "Now that the mama raccoon is back safe with her babies."

The homeowner had apparently recently removed a vent on the roof, and the hole hadn't been sealed.

Dmytryk tells the Chronicle that all homeowners should exercise caution when repairing such holes, so as not to trap any creatures inside. "Nocturnal animals, whether it’s a mouse or rat, a raccoon, a cat — there could be something in there," she said.

Two loutish raccoons took it upon themselves to occupy a Redwood City bank today, and both suspects remain at large after their raccoon party free-for-all.

It is that time of year when uninvited raccoons just waltz right in to yards, garages, and even homes with unattended bags of Purina, acting like they own the place, and refusing to respect even the simplest of other creatures' boundaries. And so it was again in a Tuesday morning break-in in Redwood City, as KRON4 reports that two raccoons broke into a bank, then of course ignored several polite requests to leave before the Peninsula Humane Society  cleared out the “masked bandits.

Just look at them, probably changing the messages on outgoing voicemails, ignoring that food the break room is clearly labeled as belonging to someone else, and approving home-equity loans that are nowhere near credit-worthy. “There were several broken ceiling tiles, and the masked bandits knocked papers around and even a computer over.” Peninsula Humane Society communications manager Buffy Martin Tarbox told KRON4.

Noticed by an ATM user early Tuesday morning, the raccoons gave chase upon being initially told they had to leave. “The bank managers let our rescue staff into the bank, and after about ten minutes of chasing the raccoons around the bank, we were finally able to safely shoo them outside,” Tarbox said in a statement to KPIX. “They apparently didn’t want to leave the bank.”

In true raccoon fashion, the little trash pandas’ refusal to clean up after themselves revealed how they executed their caper.

“There were muddy pawprints on a tree outside the bank, so we suspect the raccoons climbed the tree to the roof of the bank, and then somehow managed to crawl into the air ducts and fell through the ceiling tiles onto the floor of the bank,” Tarbox’s statement explained, according to NBC Bay Area. “Thankfully the raccoons were not injured during their morning escapade, and to our knowledge they didn’t abscond with any money.”

Which is just as well, because they probably would have spent it on fast food and rotten produce instead of putting it into their savings. The pair was not charged and will avoid prosecution, so they won’t learn their lesson and they're just going to pull the same impudent shenanigans again and again. But even if these raccoons were put behind bars at San Mateo County main jail, they’d likely just slip through and walk right out.

Related: Marauding Gang of Raccoons Spotted In Golden Gate Park, Also a Coyote [SFist]

Images courtesy Peninsula Humane Society

You know what wild animals with bandit masks aren't afraid of humans and live amongst us in urban packs waiting to eat our garbage? Raccoons. And recently a father and son on a stroll through Golden Gate Park came upon a gang of 14 raccoons, many of them juveniles, along a paved walking path near the ocean.

Marc Estoque and his son Ever were walking their dog Zeus last Thursday on a trail beside North Lake, near 43rd Avenue and Fulton Street when they came upon the troupe. And while they looked cuddly, Estoque warned his son not to get too close because raccoons can be very mean.

Also, he needed to restrain Zeus from getting too curious.

Then, just as they passed by the pack of raccoons, Ever spotted a coyote just off the trail down by the water — which you can see on the video below. Estoque comments, "It's like the end of days!"

NBC Bay Area spoke to SF City College professor and urban wildlife expert Matthew Schweitzer, who explained that raccoons will sometimes gather in packs like this to beg for food, and they can get aggressive about it. These raccoons have likely become too accustomed to being close to humans, and they've likely been fed by passersby, he says.

Three years ago there was an apparent upswell in the raccoon population in the city, and a wildlife expert at the time explained that it's in the summer and early fall that momma raccoons begin taking their broods out into the world to teach them how to forage for food.

Rec and Parks spokesperson Tamara Aparton tells SFGate that they've been posting signage telling people not to feed any of the wildlife, because it can lead to them being aggressive with people and potentially needing to be put down.

Coyote sightings in Golden Gate Park have been a bit more common during the pandemic as they have been in other parts of the city, with fewer cars on the road and less people around in general.

It's unclear if the coyote in the video was stalking the raccoons or running away from them — Estoque tells NBC Bay Area that "It seemed like the coyote was avoiding the raccoon family. Like the raccoons were running the roost."

Anyway, don't feed the raccoons! And keep your dogs away from them! They clearly are trying to take over and we must be vigilant.

Related: Raccoon Invasion Looms As Pesky Critters Begin To Forage

Pretty much all Bay Area critter populations have swollen with this year’s wetter and warmer weather, and we’re seeing flocks of wild parrots, whales, and rats of unusual sizes. But that also includes the least welcome, most intrusive little bastards of the animal kingdom — the barbaric bandit raccoons. The annual early autumn San Francisco raccoon menace is often responsible for dog assaults, attacks on people, and the impudent louts making themselves at home in kitchens or garages, and this year has already produced raccoons so large people thought they were kangaroos. With the completely uncalled-for and indefensible holiday International Raccoon Appreciation Day coming up this weekend, SFist spoke to some Bay Area raccoon experts on what to expect with the coming raccoon scourge.

Critter Twitter is exploding with raccoon content these days, much of which presents the unmannerly mongrels as cute or uplifting. Do not be deceived! These nuisance beasts are not your dog’s friend, as the above propaganda would indicate. They’re coming to steal your Purina, knock out your electricity, and prance right into your kitchen with that ‘What are you lookin’ at?’ expression on their insolent little faces.

“We are seeing an increase in calls,” said David Martins, owner of critter removal service Wildlife Detectives, whose humane, no-kill practices have earned the recommendations of Humane Societies across northern California. “Since there isn’t any scientific organization doing formal studies of the raccoon population in the Bay Area, it is difficult to estimate if the population is going up.”

While anecdotal, this sentiment is also backed by SFist’s good friend Deb Campbell, spokesperson for San Francisco Animal Care and Control. (SFACC can answer all your raccoon questions at their Pet Pride Day this Sunday.) “There are certainly many raccoons in the city,” Campbell told SFist. “Right now raccoons are more visible — this applies to all types of wildlife — as the babies born in the spring are now out with their parents, foraging for food.”

But they’re also creating racket and having their raccoon parties on roofs and in basements, which the SFACC says can be prevented. “Evaluate the environment and see if there’s anything that could be attracting raccoons,” Campbell said. “Water sources, pets fed outside, bird feeders, open trash or green bins — all are enticing to raccoons. If there’s no food, water or shelter available, they’ll move along.”

Try telling that to your dog! Dogs are often victims of raccoon attacks, and SFACC can provide some help in that department as well. “We give out flashing collar charms for dogs to wear at night,” Campbell told SFist. “Wildlife is usually wary of things that they don’t understand and will stay away. A water pistol will usually annoy a raccoon enough to send them on their way. A loud noise should frighten them away. Keeping dogs on leash is the best way to avoid all sorts of danger, including scuffles with wildlife.”

These churlish little animals are out in force right now because the mommas are essentially teaching the babies ‘how to be raccoons’. “It is during the late summer and early fall months that [mother raccoons] begin to take them out into the world and teach them where to find the available food sources in their territory,” Wildlife Detectives’ Martins told SFist. “This is when many people experience their new sod or lawns being dug up. What is happening is that the mother raccoon is teaching her babies how to find grubs, which is a source of food for them. A heavily watered lawn will have grubs, and that is what the raccoons are after. It is believed that they can actually hear the grub activity under the lawn.”

They are crafty critters! That can certainly be a problem if they’ve infiltrated your home. “Shelter can be unsecured deck space under your home, open crawl spaces, broken vent covers or other entry points in your home,” Martins said. “When a raccoon enters any of these areas, the odds are great that she is seeking a den site to give birth to her young. This is why trapping raccoons is not the solution. If you trap a mother raccoon, the babies are left behind. California state law also requires that any trapped wildlife must be released within a 150 yards or killed. Since we do not believe in killing healthy wild animals, our approach is one of peaceful coexistence and prevention.”

That said, dead raccoons are what SF Animal Care and Control mostly deals with. “We interact with raccoons daily — but most are not living,” Campbell told SFist. “Our agency picks up two or three dead raccoons a day, most hit by cars.”

Related: Who Was This Man With A Pet Raccoon On Telegraph Hill In The 1950's?

A few weeks ago, via a fascinating archive of historic SF color photos that I'm still not done with, I posted a few photos of a man only identified as a random "oldster" by the photographer, Charles Cushman, who was himself a tourist at the time the photos were taken, in March 1952. The man was walking a pet raccoon on a leash and sitting feeding it grapes atop Telegraph Hill, and apart from being just a funny San Francisco moment captured on Kodachrome, film, it opened up a small neighborhood mystery that I figured could be solved by someone who'd been there long enough to possibly remember this guy.

And, thanks to a tipster and a young reporter at a local elementary school's newspaper, we now have a partial answer.

Reporting on the arguable epidemic of wild raccoons in San Francisco in recent years, and the potential problems they cause — especially for residents walking pets at night — Lina Deng found out some of the story of the man in the Cushman photograph, likely via a family member who'd lived in the area a long time.

Deng was a student at Yick Wo Elementary School at the time of the piece, in 2014, and was likely a 5th grader, writing in the school's paper, hilariously dubbed The New Yick Times.

She writes,

Did you know that more than 60 years ago, a person named ‘‘Cramer, The Raccoon Man’’ had a raccoon as a pet? He lived at Filbert Street near Grant, just a couple blocks away from Yick Wo. Cramer fed grapes and cherries to his raccoon. He wanted a pet so he got a raccoon. Really weird, but cool. There is a picture of him with his raccoon on a leash at Coit Tower. There are other amazing pictures of “Cramer, The Raccoon Man” online.

So, even though it's just anecdotal history, and we don't know if Cramer (or maybe Kramer?) was the man's first or last name, it's at least confirmed that he was known to neighbors as "The Raccoon Man," and lived on Filbert Street not far from Coit Tower.

It is another example of how Cushman's photos, which span the country and the years between 1938 and his death in 1972, offer documents of lives that may not have been documented anywhere else.

Previously: Who Was This Man With A Pet Raccoon On Telegraph Hill In The 1950's?
Amazing Trove Of Color Photos Show A Brand New Golden Gate Bridge & Scenes From The 1939 World's Fair

Among the trove of historic photos SFist has been sharing from the Charles W. Cushman Collection at the Indiana University Archives, there are several that Cushman took on an afternoon stroll up Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower in March 1952 that deserve a special look.

Cushman found the above "oldster" as he describes him, walking a pet raccoon and feeding the animal grapes, seemingly out of his own mouth.

It's a classic image of San Francisco kook-dom but also one that's been lost to local history. A Redditor found one of the Cushman photos two years ago and posted it here — to which someone responded with a photo of a stylish woman in the 1970s walking her pet raccoon down Polk Street. So was this some kind of trend?

As we all know, raccoons can be kind of crazy/dangerous, even though Animal Control says they're not if they're not rabid.

Anyway, this old man had domesticated his little friend, as you can see below. Anyone who might no anyone who lived in the area at the time who might have known who this guy was is encouraged to email us at tips@sfist.com.

Previously: Take In The Views Of SF From Telegraph Hill, Chinatown, And Ocean Beach In 1952

A couple visiting San Francisco from Ireland were walking in the Richmond District on Thursday night when more than a dozen raccoons jumped out and attacked them and their daughter's dogs.

ABC-7 reports that just after their own news team arrived at the scene, near 41st and Anza, on the following night, two raccoons popped out of the bushes again.

Brendan O'Sullivan, who was visiting his daughter with his wife, told ABC, "In the group there were at least 12 to 15 in the group, but there were four vicious big raccoons that were actually doing the fighting." 12 to 15? Dang! No joke.

O'Sullivan's wife had to receive painful rabies treatments in her leg following the attack. They're worried about the dogs, too—one of them is having trouble walking, while the other one was victim to a much more brutal attack.

"We thought he was killed," said O'Sullivan. "They were actually dragging him away."

This is not the only time a raccoon attack like this has happened (in the Richmond District, in particular); in August, a couple was pounded on by a swarm of raccoons. Earlier that month, another woman's dogs were attacked while out walking in Bernal Heights.

Neighbor Elizabeth Heidhues told ABC, "I got a hold of Animal Care and Control and they promised they would do a training out here and we were looking for site to do a training and I never heard back from them."

Be careful out there, folks.

Huge swaths of San Francisco found themselves without power Saturday, after two separate incidents — one caused by a transformer that exploded, the other caused by a raccoon — took out lines across the city.

At 7:45 a.m. Saturday, a PG&E transformer (the power-distribution variety, not a Robot in Disguise) exploded in Bernal Heights. Two men were injured in the blast, reports the SF Chronicle:

Robert Antonelli, 55, was at the window of his Heyman Avenue home about 7:45 a.m. talking to a friend, Manuel Cruz, 34, of Daly City, who was standing outside, when he heard what sounded like a firecracker’s wick sizzling.

“And the next thing, ka-boom,” Antonelli said. “It exploded like a bomb. It blew things off my shelf. I flew back into my bed. Debris flew back into my room.”

Antonelli said Cruz, who was standing next to the transformer, was knocked out, and both men were taken to San Francisco General Hospital. Antonelli said he was treated for light burns on his face and released, but Cruz was more seriously burned and remained hospitalized.

According to PG&E spokesman Matt Nauman, the blast was caused by "an equipment failure that occurred while a utility crew was at Wool Street and Eugenia Avenue, working to fix a power failure that began about 7:30 a.m."

“We will be conducting a full review into this incident to determine what caused the outtage and what caused the injuries," Nauman says.

About 4,000 lost power due to the explosion, and it took PG&E all day to get them back online, with 60 still without power as of 9 p.m., CBS5 reports.

Then, at 7:59 p.m. Saturday, 3,360 more households in the Inner Sunset and near Golden Gate Park lost power when, according to PG&E spokesperson J.D. Guidi, "a raccoon came in contact with power lines at 17th Avenue and Lawton Street."

Guidi told KRON4 that the raccoon "was found on top of a power line causing the outage." He didn't offer an update on the beast's condition, but we're all educated people and can probably hazard a pretty solid guess.

By 9:26, all customers who'd been left in the dark by the raccoon incident had their power restored, and all raccoons who'd been hoping to keep us in the dark so they could continue to attack us and our pets retreated to their lairs, intent on finding a new, better way to cause our demise.

Previously: Pack Of Raccoons Swarm Richmond District Couple
WTF Is Happening With Raccoons In SF: What You Can Do To Keep Your Dog Safe

The veterinarian bill for American Grilled Cheese Kitchen owner Heidi Gibson's 60-pound pit bull came to $350. As she wrote to Facebook, beneath a picture of Micky's raw and bleeding muzzle:

"Micky: 1
Raccoon: 0 (you don't want the details)"

Actually, we did, so SFist reached out to Gibson.

"I was out walking my two dogs in Bernal Heights about 9 o'clock on a Friday night about two weeks ago," Gibson says. "We've seen a couple [raccoons] in the neighborhood, and I'm just walking the dogs around a quiet street when the dogs kind of pull me over to sniff a little area between two houses."

"I heard a hiss from the area," she continued, "so I pulled the dogs — who were on leash —away, and a raccoon came out of this little crawl space and ran after us, and chased us down the street.

"I'm just running down the middle of the street, it's running after us, and it caught up with us about halfway down the street, and just jumped on one of the dogs."

According to Gibson, "The raccoon did not win the fight, but it was very much the raccoon's idea to fight. I tried not to get in the middle of it: It pretty much just latched onto my pit bull's face. He managed to get ahold of one of its legs, and the two of them were locked in battle. I don't think the raccoon made it very far, but it managed to get away.

"I took the dogs home, the pitbull's face was all swollen up, and he lost a tooth. He's totally fine, he's a big tough boy, and now the two of them check between every car and every house as we go on walks."

In consulting her veterinarian, Gibson asked if, based on the raccoon's erratic behavior, it might have been rabid. The vet's reaction: It could have been, but as long as Gibson hadn't been herself bitten or scratched, and her dogs' rabies shots were up to date, there was no knowing or really worrying.

Jamie Ray, the Director of San Francisco Rescued Orphan Mammal Program (SFROMP), notes that nighttime dog walks present the greatest chance of a wildlife encounter. "Walking dogs on a leash at night and making some noise while walking is a great way to avoid encounters between dogs and wildlife at night," she advises. "A jingling tag or other 'noise maker' on a leash can alert wildlife to the approach of the dogs."

A call to Ray, who acts as a sort of lifeline for Animal Care & Control in San Francisco, puts you on the line with her helpful advice, including the note that we're in the midst of baby season. That's right: Young raccoons, she tells SFist, are beginning to leave their burrows for the first time with their protective mothers.

Any raccoons you see in a pack, Ray explains, are mothers and their children who are learning to live among humans, crossing our streets, fishing through our trash, and catching mice and rats (their main diet).

But Ray is eager to note that an encounter such as Gibson's — not to mention the recent attack by a swarm of raccoons on a thoroughly terrified Richmond District couple — is as "unfortunate as it is rare."

"This was an accident of timing and highly unusual because neither the dogs nor raccoons were aware of the other’s presence until they were nose to nose and startled," Ray writes to SFist. "Usually dogs will bark or pull on their leash to alert their human companions that another animal is nearby, allowing time to avoid an encounter."

Ray points to the high media profile of skirmishes with raccoons. One of the least forgettable among those made a massive splash in 2013 when Digg Founder Kevin Rose recorded this video of him throwing a raccoon off his pet.

Raccoon numbers could be growing in San Francisco, but it's impossible to tell. By the time Deb Campbell of Animal Care & Control encounters raccoons, they're DOA, but the number she's picked up has remained about the same of late. "One of our jobs as an agency is to pick up dead animals from the street," she explains.

"There's always been a high raccoon population just like with any urban environment. Raccoons are opportunistic so they're drawn to places that have a large human population, because they take food from humans, through our trash or pet food left outside, a lot of opportunities for raccoons."

When Campbell does get a call about a raccoon — which is often — she refers her caller to SFROMP — essentially, to Ray. "We always preach co-existence," Campbell elaborates. "I know that in some situations things can get out of control, and if wildlife is getting out of control or is in distress, this is our emergency dispatch number, and you call that if a raccoon is attacking you or you see a raccoon thats injured or sick, just call (415) 554-9400."

Chad Kruger with NorCal Wildlife Removal has a different, perhaps darker view of raccoons in no small part due to the cases he sees. He traps them — which is only legal if property damage has been incurred —  and kills them, as relocation is illegal in California.

"I do about half my work in SF and half my work on the Peninsula," he says, estimating that he's provided his services in the City about a hundred times since the beginning of this year.

"It definitely picks up as it gets into fall, between August and November," he says, "And while we're in a drought it's kind of been crazy all year. Animals are a lot more desperate, so they're looking for food and water, it makes them a lot more brazen, breaking into peoples' homes a lot more because they're dehydrated and starving."

That bowl left outside for your pet might look very appetizing to a thirsty and starving raccoon, and that's why, says Kruger, "people should definitely be bringing their dog food or cat food in at night, water bowls too."

"That's what will cause a confrontation is when a dog goes outside and a raccoon is eating their food, or if there's youngsters around at night and the dog goes outside to use the bathroom, that's when a lot of dogs get attacked and or killed, I would recommend that people keep their dogs on a leash in the middle of the night if they're taking them out," Kruger concludes, "That's how people can avoid losing their dog."

But to that, Ray might add her bit about living together in an urban, but wild, environment. "While some people may have a 'revenge' response toward raccoons, coexistence between dogs and wildlife is not only possible, but not difficult."

Man on Telegraph Hill with pet raccoon. Photo Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection Indiana University Archives / Digital Library Program

Previously: Pack Of Raccoons Swarm Richmond District Couple

Over the weekend, Digg founder and Google partner Kevin Rose heard his dog, Toaster, "crying and yelping in pain" in the wee hours of the morning. Concerned, he went outside only to discover his dog being attacked by a raccoon. Rose then ran downstairs and grabbed the creature off of his pooch, bare hands and all, tossing it down a stairwell.

Security surveillance footage captured the harrowing scene. Do not try this at home! Rose writes in the video's opening scene, "I do not encourage animal violence. I wanted to get the wild animal as far away from us as possible."

Except for a few claw and bite marks, Toaster is recovering nicely.

[Gawker]

After slipping and falling while walking her dog, an Alameda woman was attacked by a gaze of raccoons on Sunday along Central Avenue toward Eighth Street.

"I was trying to calm the dog down and saw the raccoon walking toward us. Then I saw four more run down from the trees and I started to run as fast as I could, dragging the dog," Rachel Campos de Ivanov, 33, explained to Oakland Tribune. "My dog was barking, trying to fight them off and I was trying to protect my face while on the ground. I was wearing long pants and a jacket, my face was the only thing exposed."

Campos de Ivanov suffered a bite to the leg and now must endure rabies treatment.

[OakTrib]

This is amazing. Someone must have dropped some fast food wrappers or chicken bones on that bus or something, or as Jim Herd suspects, the drivers feed them. (Yeah, we know this photo has been posted all over the place today, but who can resist?!)

[Via SF Citizen, Troy Holden, and Laughing Squid]