Two San Francisco roommates spent nearly two months listening to mysterious scratching and movement inside their apartment walls before discovering they had been living alongside an entire family of raccoons.
Isaac Brodkin said the unsettling noises began in April and quickly became impossible to ignore.
“It kept waking me up, and I couldn’t sleep, and that’s when I knew it had to be some kind of animal,” Brodkin told local ABC affiliate KGO-TV.
After doing some research, Brodkin and his roommate became convinced raccoons had moved into the walls. They contacted their property managers at Kenney & Everest Real Estate of San Francisco, who sent an inspector to the apartment.
The inspector confirmed the presence of raccoons and sprayed a repellent, but the animals refused to leave.
Instead, the noises grew louder and more disturbing.
“The sound just kept getting more and more intense, just like a horror movie would, and I couldn’t sleep,” Brodkin said. “So I moved into the living room to sleep there.”
Brodkin began worrying that the animals might eventually break through the wall. Before long, that is exactly what happened.
“My roommate heard the animals running around in my bedroom,” he said. “He opened the door and saw the hole.”
The roommates then realized a mother raccoon had apparently given birth inside the wall.
Brodkin said he could hear the babies chittering and even what sounded like them feeding.
“I could hear sucking sounds, like feeding,” he recalled.
Once the raccoons created an opening into the bedroom, Brodkin effectively surrendered the room to them.
“We kept the bedroom door shut,” he said. “If I needed to get my clothes, I’d run in real quick, grab them and run right out.”
The roommates eventually moved out in mid-June after weeks of living with the constant noise and fear that the animals could enter the rest of the apartment.
Shortly before they left, an exterminator opened the wall to remove the raccoon family. The rescue ended on a sad note when the mother became trapped inside the wall and died.
“The mother raccoon fell through the wall and trapped itself,” Brodkin said. “I was sad about that because I felt like I’d gotten to know this family by living so close for two months.”
He said he hoped the baby raccoons were now safe and “living their best life” after being removed from the apartment.
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The property managers gave Brodkin and his roommate approximately $4,600 in reduced rent and moving-related expenses.
What began as a few strange scratching sounds ultimately forced the pair out of their bedroom, then out of the apartment entirely, after their hidden houseguests turned the walls into a nursery.