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You can climb, but you can’t hide: Toronto’s raccoons are now scaling cranes

You can climb, but you can’t hide: Toronto’s raccoons are now scaling cranes

On Thursday morning, Toronto tower crane operator Robert MacFarlane was working about 700 feet in the air Yonge Street and the Esplanade when he received an unexpected visitor: a raccoon.

MacFarlane, who has amassed nearly 10,000 Twitter followers thanks to his beautiful pictures of the city from his high-altitude workplace, posted photos of the visit and they quickly went viral.

The bandit-eyed nuisance had climbed up the ladder to the crane’s counter jib. Face-to-face with MacFarlane, the raccoon showed no fear.

It was “totally fearless and unintimidated by me. Basically annoyed with all of my racket,” MacFarlane wrote on Twitter.

The raccoon took “a couple of dumps,” hissed at the operator, then made his descent back down the side of the crane.

Apparently this isn’t the first time a raccoon has decided to explore what’s above the city.

“I’ve seen evidence of raccoon visits all the time and a guy that works on the 57th floor told me he saw one on the crane last week,” MacFarlane wrote on Twitter.

The encounter comes in the midst of a battle between the city of Toronto and its raccoons.

In an effort to keep the pests out of residential garbage containers, the city has proposed a newly designed green bin with a “twist-type lock” that should keep raccoons out.

“It will be easier to use for residents, but not easy to use for raccoons,” city’s public works chair Jaye Robinson said in an interview with the Globe and Mail.

Raccoons can twist and open small things, but not objects that require human-sized hands, confirmed York University raccoon expert Suzanne MacDonald.

Toronto’s current bins need replacing — they’re nearing the end of their 10-year lifespan — and residents are insisting “that rodent-resistant is the most important feature of their green bins,” with only 15 per cent of residents surveyed satisfied with the current design.

It’s about time we locked raccoons out of our green bins. They’re already taking over the skies.

The new green bins didn’t seem to be a factor, however, in the raccoon’s 700-foot climb this morning.

“He’s probably annoyed that you got one of those new green bins,” Brian Bjolin speculated on Twitter.

“That’s just it, I don’t have a new green bin. Had to pick up his cousin Rocky’s mess when I left home this morning,” MacFarlane replied.