BRIDGEPORT — Every night Tim Karnoscak gets off the night shift at Walgreens, hops on the No. 44 bus back home and texts his mom. The 29-year-old manager needs to make sure the coast is clear.
His message is usually one word: “Check.”
That’s when 59-year-old Beatrice Karnoscak grabs her flashlight and shines a beam through the darkness on her back porch in the 2800 block of South Normal Avenue.
“People must think I’m nuts,” she told.
Ed Komenda talks about difficulties in removing nuisance wildlife.
But over the past year, the family has put up with an unwanted visitor that crawls through the night looking for food to steal and turning a post-work return home into an adventure:
A big and very stubborn raccoon.
“He’s not afraid of us,” Karnoscak said of her furry neighbor, which is bigger than her 87-year-old mother's Pekingese. "It’s getting to be a nuisance.”
This raccoon sets up shop on the porch, blocking the family's path. It's even returned despite having water poured on its head.
Raccoons, which can grow as large as 20 pounds, are known to set up homes in attics, on roofs and in chimneys, where they give birth and cause a lot of damage to the home in the process, according to A All Animal Control, a Chicago-based company that specializes in capturing creatures.
“They are known to carry rabies and are a threat to any person or animal that inhabits a home or business,” the business' website says. “Their feces and urine can carry many different parasites as well.”
Last year, Karnoscak spotted a group of three raccoons hanging out on her back porch, likely looking for the food put there for the cats, Fat Guy and Bugsy.
She then began hearing stories about other raccoons slinking through the neighborhood. Feeling less alone, she called the city's Animal Care and Control Department for help, but the agency gave her frustrating news.
“Unless they’re rabid, dead, or in the house, they won’t come out,” Karnoscak said.
The next time she called, Animal Care and Control directed her to call 311, but 311 told her to call a private wildlife trapper to capture the raccoon.
Karnoscak started checking around the internet. She searched for anything she could do herself to take care of the problem. The only tactic that worked to scare the raccoon was pouring a pitcher of water on its head.
Even then, it always come back.
“The first time I saw the raccoon, it was right in front of my door,” Tim Karnoscak said. “Other times I’ve seen him, he’s just hanging out.”
Local exterminator shops like The Bug Stop, 2029 S. Halsted, offer raccoon cage traps for sale and rent. It costs $62 to get a trap.
Private wildlife trappers are another solution — but they don't work for free. Karnoscak’s research showed a raccoon removal could cost anywhere from $250-$500.
Like many Chicago residents, Karnoscak doesn’t think she should have to give up her own time and money for a raccoon removal.
Animal Care and Control did not return emails and phone calls requesting to talk about how the city deals with raccoons — and how average neighborhood folks should handle the wild animals.
To Karnoscak, trapping a wild animal on her own is absurd.
“I know my luck,” she said. “I’ll be in the car with him and the thing will break loose.”
If Karnoscak didn’t have cats that could get into a fight with the raccoon — and a 4-year-old niece who thinks the raccoon is cute — she wouldn’t be too worried about having it around.
“It’s a minute problem,” she said, “but it’s an aggravating problem.”
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:
