Raccoon gives birth in apartment’s wall then busts through into tenant’s bedroom

When the nightly scratching in his bedroom walls became too loud to bear, Isaac Brodkin started sleeping in his living room. The San Francisco resident told ABC 7 that a raccoon family was living in his apartment's walls, and that their constant scratching had been waking him up. He made a complaint to his landlord, and an exterminator was dispatched to drive the animals out, but their attempts were unsuccessful.

The raccoon and its babies stayed inside the wall. Knowing there were animals in the wall left Brodkin and his roommate uneasy. He told the broadcaster he was scared, fearing that one of the animals might break into his room.

Then, one night, he came home to find his fears realized. A mother raccoon that crawled into a San Francisco man's apartment walls pokes its head through a hole it chewed into the man's bedroom (ABC 7)"My roommate heard the animals running around in my bedroom. He opened the door and saw the hole," Brodkin told the outlet.

He wasn't surprised to learn that the animals in his wall were a mother and its babies. Brodkin told ABC 7 that he sometimes heard "sucking sounds, like feeding" alongside the scratches. "The worst thing that could happen is the animal breaks through the ceiling and, like, drops on my head while I'm sleeping," Brodkin said.

After the raccoons broke through, Brodkin called animal control for assistance. In a video obtained by ABC 7, animal control officers can be seen shining their flashlights into the the hole in the room. The baby raccoons chitter at the officers and, at one point, the mother raccoon pokes its head out through the opening.

"That's the mommy. Hi, mommy!" one of the animal control officers calls out to the raccoon in the video.

By the time they broke through the wall, the raccoons had been living in the space for almost two months. Brodkin's property management company gave him and his roommate $4,600 to cover the expenses of moving out of the unit. In mid-June an exterminator arrived to remove the animals from the walls.

Unfortunately, the mother raccoon did not survive the removal. "The mother raccoon fell through the wall and trapped itself. I was sad about that because I felt like I'd gotten to know this family by living so close for two months," Brodkin said.

The cubs were able to be removed and, according to Brodkin, were taken to Golden Gate Park, where he said he hopes they are "living their best life." Join our commenting forumJoin thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their repliesComments