SAN FRANCISCO — What if you’re lying in bed and hear loud scratching noises inside your walls… every night?<\/p>\n
That happened to two San Francisco roommates who feared something was trying to break into their apartment.<\/p>\n
And then… it did. It was a masked bandit, of sorts.<\/p>\n
It was actually a mother raccoon who gave birth inside the wall of this rental unit, then broke all the way through to the apartment.<\/p>\n
“They just kept scratching and scratching through this wall,” Isaac Brodkin said.<\/p>\n
That sound was heard for weeks by Brodkin and his roommate inside the walls of their San Francisco apartment.<\/p>\n
Brodkin took video of the actual sounds he was hearing: something scraping the wall and taking out big chunks.<\/p>\n
“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 said.<\/p>\n
Online research pointed to raccoons, which are known to live in nearby Golden Gate Park.<\/p>\n
Brodkin says he began hearing clawing in his bedroom walls last April. He and his roommate notified the property managers, Kenney & Everest Real Estate of San Francisco. Management sent an inspector who confirmed it was raccoons. Weeks later, an exterminator sprayed a repellent, but the animals remained inside the wall for weeks.<\/p>\n
Leaving the tenants to worry: “What if it breaks through?”<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
Brodkin said he and his roommate made several requests to remove the animals. Management said the pest control company was not immediately available.<\/p>\n
“I definitely was scared,” Brodkin said, “I thought an animal was going to break in.”<\/p>\n
And then it did.<\/p>\n
“My roommate heard the animals running around in my bedroom. He opened the door and saw the hole,” Brodkin said.<\/p>\n
Turns out a mother raccoon had crawled into a hole in the exterior wall of their building, which was once part of a Zen Buddhist temple. The raccoon gave birth in the wall, then broke through to Brodkin’s bedroom.<\/p>\n
They could hear the chittering of baby raccoons in the wall.<\/p>\n
“I also could hear, like, sucking sounds, like feeding,” Brodkin recalled.<\/p>\n
“We kept the bedroom door shut,” Brodkin said, “if I needed to get my clothes, I’d run in real quick, grab them and run right out.”<\/p>\n
The roommates called animal control. A video shows two officers shining a flashlight into the hole in the wall until the mother raccoon peered through.<\/p>\n
“Oh, there’s one. Hi there. Did I disturb you?” one officer is heard saying as the mother stuck her face down through the hole. “That’s the mommy. Hi, Mommy.”<\/p>\n
Animal Care and Control said officers won’t attempt to remove the animals unless there is an urgent need.<\/p>\n
“The worst thing that could happen is the animal breaks through the ceiling and, like, drops on my head while I’m sleeping,” Brodkin said.<\/p>\n
Tenant rights attorney Rahman Popal says state law requires landlords to provide a safe and livable space and gives renters protections when problems persist.<\/p>\n
“The tenants do have rights, and the landlord’s obligations are certainly invoked in a scenario like this,” Popal said. “A tenant has a right to a safe and habitable home. And they also have the right to quiet enjoyment. Very obviously, a scenario where there’s a wild animal intruding into their private space, unexpected, would intrude upon those rights. The landlord’s obligations would be triggered at that point.”<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t want to be a tenant who wakes up to find a raccoon in my living room,” Popal said.<\/p>\n
The raccoons had been living in the wall for nearly two months.<\/p>\n
Our sister station KGO-TV contacted property managers repeatedly seeking comment on their handling of the raccoon infestation. The company did not respond but did provide the tenants about $4,600 in reduced rent and expenses for moving out.<\/p>\n
Finally, in mid-June, as the tenants were removing the last of their belongings, an exterminator opened the wall to remove the animals.<\/p>\n
The mother did not survive.<\/p>\n
“The mother raccoon fell through the wall and trapped itself. I was sad about that because I felt like I’d gotten to know this family by living so close for two months,” Brodkin said.<\/p>\n
And the baby raccoons? They moved out, too.<\/p>\n
“I hope they’re in Golden Gate Park and living their best life,” Brodkin said.<\/p>\n
The property managers did not respond to our repeated requests for comment on why it took so long to remove the animals. State law gives tenants rights in these situations.<\/p>\n
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