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Food

This Raccoon Stared a Woman Down While Eating All of Her Bread

“It was the most Toronto thing that’s ever happened.”
Drew Schwartz
Brooklyn, US
Photo courtesy of Jenny Serwylo

Raccoons are the kings of Toronto. They dig up people's lawns, poop on their porches, take over their attics, and—even after the city spent $31 million on raccoon-proof trashcansstill manage to break into the things. Having successfully outsmarted their human overlords, Toronto's raccoons seem bored with just picking through trash scraps, and have now brought their siege straight into people's homes.

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On Tuesday night, three bold little bandits mounted an assault on Jenny Serwylo's house, busting through her window screen, flying into her kitchen, and commandeering the place like a band of pirates, the Toronto Star reports. They quickly zeroed in on Serwylo's bread, enticed by a particularly appetizing-looking sleeve of English muffins. After hearing rustlings of the feast going down in her kitchen, Serwylo managed to drive two of them away with a broom. But one refused to leave.

Serwylo stared at the raccoon, and he stared right back at her. He stood his ground—converting Serwylo's toaster oven into his own personal kitchen table, systematically devouring her supply of bread—seemingly daring her to try and do something about it.

“I was growling at him and hissing at him, trying to scare him out, but he wasn’t having any of it," Serwylo said.

Serwylo tried waving the end of her broom at him, but she said he would just "yank it really hard," almost taunting her, and kept feasting. She spent the next 30 minutes trying to run him out of her home, but it was hopeless: He was going to enjoy his spoils, and he was going to take his time. According to the Star, the raccoon polished off the last of "literally all the bread" in Serwylo's home before sauntering off outside through the window he'd broken in through, back out into the city he and his trash panda brethren have clearly come to control—fully carbo-loaded for wherever the next siege in the war on Toronto's citizens might take him next.

“It was the most Toronto thing that’s ever happened,” Serwylo said.

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