SAN FRANCISCO — For two San Francisco roommates, the nightly mystery began with an unsettling sound: loud scratching coming from inside the walls as they tried to sleep.
At first, they worried someone — or something — might be trying to force its way into their apartment.
Eventually, the intruder made it through. The culprit turned out to be a real-life masked bandit.
A mother raccoon had apparently given birth inside the wall of the rental unit, then scratched and chewed her way into the living space.
“They just kept scratching and scratching through this wall,” resident Isaac Brodkin said.
Brodkin said he and his roommate listened to the noises for weeks as they echoed through the walls of their San Francisco apartment.
He recorded video capturing the sounds, which appeared to show something scraping from behind the wall and tearing away large chunks of material.
“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.
Online research pointed to raccoons, which are known to live in nearby Golden Gate Park.
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.
Leaving the tenants to worry: “What if it breaks through?”
“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 said he and his roommate made several requests to remove the animals. Management said the pest control company was not immediately available.
“I definitely was scared,” Brodkin said, “I thought an animal was going to break in.”
And then it did.
“My roommate heard the animals running around in my bedroom. He opened the door and saw the hole,” Brodkin said.
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.
They could hear the chittering of baby raccoons in the wall.
“I also could hear, like, sucking sounds, like feeding,” Brodkin recalled.
“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.”
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.
“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.”
Animal Care and Control said officers won’t attempt to remove the animals unless there is an urgent need.
“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.
Tenant rights attorney Rahman Popal says state law requires landlords to provide a safe and livable space and gives renters protections when problems persist.
“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.”
“I wouldn’t want to be a tenant who wakes up to find a raccoon in my living room,” Popal said.
The raccoons had been living in the wall for nearly two months.
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.
Finally, in mid-June, as the tenants were removing the last of their belongings, an exterminator opened the wall to remove the animals.
The mother did not survive.
“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.
And the baby raccoons? They moved out, too.
“I hope they’re in Golden Gate Park and living their best life,” Brodkin said.
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.
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