In winter, don’t be surprised if a raccoon drops in

Nov. 23 was not a typical workday at one Toronto-area office building. When employees showed up, there was a gaping hole in the ceiling above one desk. Underneath the desk, near the legs of a red chair, sat a masked intruder looking remarkably relaxed.

It was a raccoon, and it had crashed through the ceiling.

For Brad Gates and his team, the event was a typical workday. The wildlife control company he’s run for three decades fields such a call — about a raccoon plummeting through a ceiling, stunning the people below — about every month, making this little fellow a usual suspect, if a bit heftier at 40 pounds. Also, Gates recalled, because it was morning, the nocturnal animal was “fast asleep under the desk.”

Such incidents occur year-round. But wildlife professionals say they are a bit more common in the cold of winter, when raccoons, which are adept at locating and squeezing through even small crevices in buildings and houses, cozy down in nooks of human shelters for longer stretches of time. Squirrels love attics, too, but when testing the load-bearing limits of ceilings, raccoons have a weight disadvantage. That is particularly true in commercial buildings, which often feature dropped ceilings meant to hide infrastructure, not serve as raccoon terrain.

“They may have been living in the building for a long period of time and may have found the one tile that wasn’t set in as it should be,” Gates said. “And everything just comes tumbling down under the raccoon.”

Their surprise appearances happen often enough that the internet features plenty of hilarious video of raccoons, legs splayed, suddenly dropping into human habitat, as well as tales of havoc wreaked during their attempts to escape. This year, falling raccoons seem to have favored Texas, plunging into the apartment of an Arlington woman who told a local television station that she’d heard the animals “have a party” in the ceiling; dropping into a San Antonio College building as a cleaner mopped nearby; and crashing into a corrections office in Angelina County.

Raccoons flourish in nearly every corner of the United States, and they are super smart, so you might say nowhere is safe from an intrusion. In December 2016, a raccoon breached the ceiling of a liquor store in Bristol, Tenn. In Facebook posts, storekeepers shared security camera video of the animal landing on all fours, collecting itself, then ransacking shelves as though hunting for the perfect vintage. At one point, it flips what the store manager reported was a $45.99 bottle of Baker’s Bourbon onto the ground and “nails the landing.” The manager’s post continued: “Warning there is evidence of alcohol abuse in this video. . .the raccoon broke a few bottles.”

Raccoons frequently encroach on attics and ceilings. But while invading protected and warm human space is certainly intentional, falling is not, said John Griffin, director of urban wildlife for the Humane Society of the United States. In houses, this usually happens when ceiling drywall is weakened by moisture, mold or raccoon waste, if the critters have spent enough time above to have amassed a heavy latrine, as their toilet area is known.