On a night in late July, Meghan Noren was in bed when she heard a sort of scratching. She thought it was her dog.
“I just kind of ignored it and then my doorbell camera went off and that's when I saw the video of it,” she said.
Noren had caught a raccoon on camera at her Erin Ridge home.
This wasn’t the first raccoon sighting within the limits of St. Albert, and it likely won’t be the last — the city has been receiving reports about raccoons for the last four years, with the most recent reported sighting on Nov. 4.
City environmental coordinator Melissa Logan said she did not have an exact number of reports at the time of the interview, but estimated no more than 10 sightings have been reported to the city.
“They're very intelligent, very dexterous. They're very adaptable to their environment and they’re not too concerned about humans. They will take advantage of whatever resources they can get their hands on. It's definitely something we want to keep an eye on. They can cause a little bit of chaos,” she said.
Noren, who was shocked at seeing a raccoon this far north, did not report her July 22 video footage to the municipal authority. She said she didn’t have concerns about the raccoon.
“I mean, if it was a regular occurrence, maybe we'd be a little bit concerned,” she said.
Noren said her husband thinks the fuzzy and masked nighttime visitor was catching bugs around their porch light.
“He thinks it was probably trying to climb up to get the bugs because that's what they eat. It definitely left some scratch marks on the door frame,” she said.
A resident in Kingswood also caught a small furry bandit on security footage travelling through their backyard on Nov. 4. The resident reported their sighting to the city and Logan, along with the public works pest crew, went out to the resident’s home.
“We didn't see any (raccoon) signs. Where it was sighted was very close to Riverlot 56. It's possible that there's some movement back and forth between the natural area and that neighbourhood,” said Logan.
Logan said the city has been getting reports of raccoons since 2018, but nothing has ever been confirmed.
One of them was from a resident who reported pulling a live raccoon out of a roof vent, which is the only live sighting Logan has heard of.
“We couldn't find any sign of (that raccoon) after that,” she said, explaining all the sightings have been on camera or raccoon remains.
During the summer, city workers received a report of a dead raccoon on Meadowview Drive but were never able to recover the body.
Meadowview Drive seems to be a popular location for raccoons.
Natalie Bee, a stage musician and artist who works around St. Albert, saw a raccoon run across the road in front of her vehicle on the evening of Oct. 25.
“I had to stop because I was like, ‘Is that a cat? That’s not a cat, that’s a freaking raccoon,'” she said.
The raccoon stopped running and looked up at Bee.
“And then it did this little thing with its hands and ran off,” she said.
Bee did not report her sighting, and rumour has it the raccoon has been in the area for a couple of years now.
According to an Alberta Fish and Wildlife website, raccoons are adaptable omnivores that will essentially eat anything available.
They are nocturnal but do roam during the day. They fatten up for the winter but are not true hibernators.
Logan said raccoons like to be around water but can be found anywhere.
“They will often wash their food in water, so being in close to a water body — maybe a storm water facility, a ravine or closer to Big Lake — would probably be more attractive to them. But like I said, they are highly adaptable,” she said.
Raccoons are a known nuisance to humans and can carry disease and parasites.
The City of St. Albert recommends people report sightings so it can pin down the location of established populations.
The province allows raccoon hunting and trapping any time of the year and authorizes municipalities to control raccoon populations.
“It would not be an animal (the province) would encourage us to relocate," Logan said. "Likely it would be lethal control, but I don't really want people to ... that's why people aren't reporting. They're afraid we're going to kill them. But, I mean, we can’t have a population setting up in the city, they would wreak havoc.
“Lethal control is recommended by Fish and Wildlife,” she said.
As for whether the city has plans to trap the sly bandits caught on video, Logan said they don’t know where to put a trap. The city would like to see a confirmed location first.
“We’re going to put some thought into putting up some monitoring cameras and see if we can find anything. They are less active in the winter, so I'd really like to catch some footage of them and see where they are before we try any trapping,” she said.
