Raccoon Break-In

A few years back I responded to a home invasion turned raccoon break-in. I’ve worked for the Salt Lake Police Department for 10 years now, and this was definitely one of the better cases I’ve worked. During the summer of 2006, we received several calls from a woman who was hearing sounds in her basement and feared it was an intruder. We checked it out the first time but to no avail, no one was breaking into her house, of course we hadn’t considered that it wasn’t a person. A few weeks after that first call she called again, this time in hysterics that there was definitely someone in her basement and she was no longer in her home. We responded quickly, searching the perimeter first and then entering the home. There was no evidence of forced entry on any doors or windows so we proceeded quietly inside, guns and lights drawn. As we stepped into the foyer the silence was broken by the creaks on the old wood floors, and the loud sounds from the kitchen.
We slowly made our way toward the noise, only to find that the intruder had a black mask, a striped tail, and big, eyes that were fixed on us. As we put our guns away and turned on the light, the culprit was revealed, a large, angry, mother raccoon who had been stripping the cupboards of their food. We laughed at the incident and moved to shoo her from the house, but our actions were hasty and she quickly stood on her back legs and let out a growl like none I’d heard before. If you took a cougar and mixed its roar with the scratchy sound of a record player, you’d have just about what we heard. As embarrassing as it is, my partner and I were out of there faster than lightning.
Later we checked in to find that she had called in professionals to take care of the problem, turns out she had a nest in the basement with 4 kits, no wonder she was so aggressive. Besides all the food the woman had to replace, she also spent $2,200 in reparations! Even if the bandit didn’t steal anything, that was one expensive raccoon break-in.

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