A months-long investigation into “raccoon-resistant” green bins. Defiantly eating bread in front of a frustrated homeowner. Shutting down part of a subway line for nearly 20 minutes.Toronto has an endless fascination with raccoons, and here’s just a few times they made the headlines in the Star in 2018:Are raccoons getting smarter?The Star’s Amy Dempsey conducted a months-long investigation into the behaviour of raccoons in the laneway by her East York home. This year, the city of Toronto rolled out its last “raccoon-resistant” green bins, with a turning-lock mechanism meant to be simple for human hands and impossible for raccoon ones.But after a video hit the internet in April showing a raccoon breaking into a green bin in less than 30 seconds, and when the bins in her neighbourhood began to get raided in the summer, Dempsey decided to get to the bottom of it.With the aid of raccoon expert Suzanne MacDonald, Dempsey set up cameras in the alley beside her house to catch the raccoons in action.On one fateful overnight in August, Dempsey’s motion-sensing camera recorded a mama raccoon successfully yanking the lock on the top of a green bin until it popped open. It took her nine seconds. Were those specific bins simply broken, or was there a design flaw? Dempsey ordered a brand new green bin and two chickens. Three nights in, a raccoon followed a bait trail of chicken skin to the bin, yanked the bin onto its side, and popped it open in one confident spin of its paws. City officials still maintained that the lid, or parts inside it, were loosened. But not everyone agreed. “Holy cow!” MacDonald said upon hearing the news. “You have a genius raccoon! I am so pleased for you. That’s awesome.”The bread-eating banditIf a raccoon broke into your house, what would you do? For Toronto resident Jenny Serwylo, that hypothetical became her reality. One September evening, Serwylo was awoken by loud noises f ...
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