It was a night like any other when the raccoons made their move. Toronto resident Jenny Serwylo had enjoyed a quiet evening at home Tuesday and had gone to bed when she was startled awake by noises coming from her kitchen. The culprit? Three raccoons had broken through her window screen. The target? Her bread.Leaping into action with a broom, Serwylo made enough of a commotion that two of the bandits decided the goods weren’t worth it. But the third simply stared at her from behind her toaster oven, defiantly gnawing on her English muffins.“He was like, ‘I’m eating here, get out of here,’ ” she said.Eventually, Serwylo called 311, hoping the city would be able to give her some advice. They told her to try to find a 24-hour wildlife removal company. She couldn’t get through to any.Serwylo’s standoff lasted over half-an-hour, she said. “I was growling at him and hissing at him, trying to scare him out, but he wasn’t having any of it.”Occasionally he would even grab the broom handle she was pointing at him and “yank it really hard,” she said.Finally, after he had eaten literally all the bread in her house, the last holdout got up and calmly walked back through her window, which she quickly locked.That didn’t stop the group from spending the next two hours scratching to get back in. “Hopefully, my locks hold,” Serwylo said.The experience was “hilarious,” she said, if also a little scary. “It was the most Toronto thing that’s ever happened.”Now, she gets to clean up the mess in her kitchen — no small task, considering raccoon poop can carry infections that can cause serious illness, blindness and — while rare — death.Toronto Animal Services spokesperson Bruce Hawkins told the Star the situation was “uncommon,” and to contact a private wildlife company if a healthy animal gets in your home. (Animal Services only de ...
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