How Toronto lost its wild 100-year war with raccoons

If you live in Toronto in 2023, the identity of this mystery beast will seem obvious. It was a raccoon. What else could it be? But Tozer’s encounter took place in Toronto 100 years ago. It would take him a few more weeks, several failed capture attempts and help from an animal wrangler at the Toronto Zoo to figure it out. That’s no mark against Tozer. He was an able yardsman, but he lived in a different time — in a different city, really. A Toronto without raccoons.

The gardener’s quest to capture his animal intruder in 1925 was a turning point in Toronto history: the earliest recorded case of a raccoon tampering with a garbage bin. In other words, this may have been Toronto’s first trash panda, patient zero in the city’s wild, complicated, adversarial and often ridiculous relationship with raccoons.

The newspaper report that ran in the Toronto Daily Star on July 15, 1925 — WILD GAME HAUNTING ENVIRONS OF ROSEDALE — was one of the first clues I found on a quest to uncover the origins of the so-called war between raccoons and humans in Toronto.

It may be difficult to imagine Toronto without the animal that has become so central to the city’s identity, but raccoons were rarely seen here before the 1930s.

Sightings were spectacles that drew crowds and immediate municipal action. Raccoons discovered in the city were swiftly captured and returned to the forest, where they belonged — or so humans assumed. Cities were for people, not wild animals.

Today, of course, raccoons are everywhere, vexing and entertaining us in equal measure. They eat from our trash, pilfer from our gardens and use our fences as highways from one backyard buffet to another. They live in attics, sheds and condo balconies. They climb cranes, hop trains, scamper across the windowed glass ceiling above Union Station, wander into downtown grocery stores, ride the subway and become trapped in garbage bins. They turn our backyards into their playgrounds and toilets. The boldest ones steal food delivery from our doorsteps and break into our houses.

My interest in raccoon history started with trouble in my own backyard. A few years ago, I spent a summer filming trash panda activity in my laneway in East York to document how they were breaking into my supposedly raccoon-resistant compost bin. One morning, as I cleaned a mess of chicken skin and cat food left in my laneway, I wondered: How did it come to this? I had found myself, somewhat embarrassingly, becoming obsessed with raccoons — determined to outsmart them, but not sure I ever would. At the very least, I wanted to figure them out.

“Though we may seem to be laughing, it’s only to keep from getting hysterical.”

What I found in a review of newspaper clippings from the past century is the story of how Toronto went from no raccoons to the “raccoon capital of the world” in 100 years. It’s a tale of political intrigue, hijinks and frustration that has erupted into adult temper tantrums and occasional violence. It features an unsolved murder, rowhouse tenants with attic raccoons that took on city hall in 1966, allegations of blood lust over a 1976 vote to kill nuisance animals, and at least two declarations of war.

“Though we may seem to be laughing,” one woman in her 13th month of dealing with raccoons on her property told a reporter in 1965, “it’s only to keep from getting hysterical.”

It’s a story that reveals as much about humans as it does about raccoons, and it begins in the 1920s, when rural raccoons started venturing into the city and liked what they saw.

Late one night in the summer of 1929, a raccoon broke into a backyard henhouse in Midtown and murdered 16 chickens.

The birds belonged to a widow who lived two blocks north of the forested grounds of Mount Pleasant Cemetery. The massacre at the home on Balliol Street made the front page: “Captured Raccoon Faces Charges of Chickencide.”

The animal was caught after a 3 a.m. pursuit by neighbours. No details were shared about the chase or the gruesome discovery in the chicken coop, but it’s easy to imagine the cacophony of squawks and shrieks that woke locals, and the mess of feathers and blood at the crime scene.

Though I’m sceptical that one raccoon could kill 16 chickens without being pecked to death, I’ll accept the facts as reported. Never underestimate a raccoon, I’ve learned.

The incident made the humour page the next day. “A raccoon has been caught stealing chickens in Toronto and handed over to the Humane Society. Doubtless it will be allowed to live and tell its grandchildren of its adventures, becoming, in that event, a celebrated raccoonteur.”

The chicken story ends on a curious note. The captured raccoon was taken to the Humane Society, it says, “where the owner may obtain it upon application.”

That word, owner, stood out to me. No one, it seems, considered the possibility that the raccoon was a wild animal that might have emerged from the nearby cemetery grounds or ravines. Raccoons that appeared in urban neighbourhoods during this era were often assumed to be escaped pets.

The assumption makes sense. Raccoons were a highly sought-after domestic companion in the early 20th century. In 1936, the Star published a front-page advertisement for its popular pet classifieds: “CUTE PETS READY TO BRIGHTEN HOME.” Raccoons, geese and turkeys were among the animals recommended to “pep up your home life.”

For sale: A pair of pet raccoons, very quiet and tame, owner leaving city.

Lost: A Raccoon from 445 Westmount Ave. Reward for information.

Raccoons discovered in the city in the early 20th century were rarely killed.

Protected under provincial hunting regulations, they were most often released in the forest. But rules were sometimes broken, as one unfortunate Roncesvalles raccoon learned in 1947.

“Tragedy yesterday awaited a raccoon which, fired with the spirit of high adventure, sailed into the stormy precincts of Neepawa Ave. and met death,” began a Globe and Mail report.

The raccoon ran down an alleyway, pursued by a humane society inspector and a small crowd. Cornered on the veranda behind a dairy, it leaped into a tree and sneered at onlookers.

“Apparently this isn’t the first raccoon that has been seized with wanderlust. The inspector said one was brought in just the other week.”

Children gathered with sticks and stones, purportedly trying to coax the raccoon down. Then, late in the day, two boys arrived with .22-calibre rifles and took aim. A gunshot cracked and the raccoon fell from the tree, dead.

Locals were indignant. “The raccoon was real cute,” said neighbour Louisa Higgs. “There he was just looking like a cat, perched up in the tree.”

Police launched an investigation, but the boys were never found. The murder remains unsolved.

The deceased raccoon was described as having made the unusual move of venturing out of nearby High Park. “Apparently this isn’t the first raccoon that has been seized with wanderlust,” the report said. “The inspector said one was brought in just the other week.”

If it was wanderlust, thousands more raccoons were about to be seized.

By 1950, Toronto was a raccoon town.

They were living in hollow trees, cemeteries, ravines — even in churchyards and gardens. Spring marked the start of what newspapers called the annual raccoon “invasion,” reflecting what became a long tradition of using the language of war to describe encounters between human and beast.

That summer, the Star reported that a Leaside advertising executive had discovered raccoons in a tree on his property, a minister had found several living on the grounds of his church, and “seven known families” had been counted in the Rosedale ravine.

Decades later, it would be a surprise to find a churchyard or an old tree in Toronto without raccoons living in or near it.

In Rosedale, dozens would gather each night in the backyard of a home on Beaumont Road, where owner Geri Cleaver, who later became the subject of a BBC documentary, fed raccoons by hand to keep them out of her trash.

People were starting to realize that raccoons weren’t wandering into the city by accident. They wanted to be here. Raccoons “are most difficult to discourage,” a nature columnist wrote, “once they get a taste of rich city life.”

Early on, Toronto raccoons lived in hollow trees rather than in human-made structures like attics and sheds, which over time they would come to favour. They were not yet comfortable getting too close to humans, but that would change.

By the 1960s, the Toronto Humane Society was getting 20 raccoon reports a day. They were “determined to rid Toronto households of the beast,” senior inspector Roy Greer told a reporter. And yet, Greer admitted that he, personally, found it difficult to think of raccoons as enemies. After all, humans had destroyed their natural habitat. Didn’t they have as much right to be here as we did?

It was hard not to root for raccoons as they made their comeback.

In the summer of 1965, raccoons took over a peaceful block of row houses in Little Italy and refused to leave.

The 10 connected homes on Clinton Street had a 60-metre-long common attic. The space was too small for humans to enter, but raccoons had clawed their way in and were holding wild parties, fights and races in the night.

“The noise of the animals can’t be imagined by anyone who hasn’t lain in the dark separated from them by only half an inch of plaster,” the Star reported.

Albert Dickinson from house No. 263 acted as a spokesperson for the residents. “None of us are getting any sleep,” he said, “and any time now one of the big ones is going to come right through the ceiling.”

“We’ve got to get rid of them. It’s like living under a maniac’s picnic.”

“We’ve got to get rid of them,” added his wife, Irene Dickinson. “It’s like living under a maniac’s picnic.”

By now, tension between humans and raccoons had begun to rise as animals caused property damage in their quest for food and shelter. Raccoons were climbing into chimneys and tearing up roof shingles. One scraped a metal trash bin along the side of a man’s car. Another entered a house through a chimney while the family was on vacation and turned on a tap, causing a flood. “Residents are not amused,” a journalist wrote.

The Toronto Humane Society and the city had once helped remove nuisance raccoons from urban streets and yards, but now they began to back away from what had become an expensive, time-consuming and controversial issue.

The Clinton Street neighbours were caught in a cycle of frustration and helplessness that will sound familiar to some Toronto residents today. They were scared the raccoons would plunge through the ceiling, attack the kids or chew electrical wiring and start a fire.

“We’ve been told everything we can’t do but nothing we can,” said Irene Dickinson. “When we phone city hall we get transferred to every local but the washroom.”

The Humane Society offered to rent traps for $10 each, but wouldn’t help. It was illegal to shoot or poison them. And residents couldn’t block the exits because they might lock an animal inside.

After a city councillor intervened, the Humane Society sent an inspector. In two months, he snared only one raccoon. The animals dined on his bait of smoked fish and chicken heads, but mostly evaded capture.

“Surely city hall could win a battle of wits with raccoons.”

Thirteen months and many sleepless nights later, the Dickinsons were sounding desperate. They wanted the city to use tear gas to evict the animals.

“Surely city hall could win a battle of wits with raccoons,” said Albert Dickinson.

It’s unclear who won the battle, but the row houses on Clinton are still standing. There were no signs of a raccoon infestation when I visited this spring. I couldn’t find anyone who was around during the 1965 occupation, but I spoke with one resident who had lived on the block for more than 40 years.

“Raccoons?” she said from her doorway. “Oh yes, we have.” She nodded gravely and gestured to the back of her house. She saw them often — not inside, fortunately, but in the backyard. She smirked and said, “They’re everywhere.”

Something had to be done about the raccoons.

That was the mood in Toronto in the summer of 1975 when a spunky young alderman named Dorothy Thomas took up the cause.

Thomas was a 38-year-old reform councillor elected on a promise to give citizens a stronger voice at city hall. A single mom, she lived with her son in a fourplex in the Beach, a neighbourhood favoured by raccoons for its access to fresh water and mature trees.

Thomas loved “neighbour stuff,” hot issues like parking and pets that got people talking. She was best known for launching Toronto’s poop-and-scoop program. Thomas was fiery, blunt and didn’t back down from a fight. (After inciting controversy with a scathing assessment of the city of Calgary, she shrugged off the outcry and doubled down. “It’s very ugly in Calgary.”)

The councillor had been getting complaints from residents about raccoon property damage. She was concerned about people who couldn’t afford private animal control services.

That July, Thomas brought a proposal to council that might have forever changed human-raccoon relations in Toronto. She asked the city to take responsibility for raccoon control.

This was a huge moment. On the table was the possibility of a raccoon-free city.

The price tag to round up all the raccoons: $52,000 in traps, plus labour, the equivalent of $284,000 today.

Thomas asked the Toronto Humane Society to weigh in. By now, they were getting 60 raccoon reports a day, but unless an animal was sick or injured, they did not intervene.

Executive director Maurice Cowper-Smith didn’t like the idea of the city taking over raccoon control. He made it clear the Toronto Humane Society would not be involved.

“Nobody, it appears, wants to accept the incredible cost or responsibility of ridding private homes of raccoons”

The Humane Society’s purpose was to look after the welfare of animals, Cowper-Smith said. “And there’s no evidence that raccoons are not enjoying life in the city.”

His recommendation: leave the raccoons alone.

There were, it’s safe to say, thousands of raccoons in Toronto in the 1970s, and the logistical hurdles of removing them would have been enormous, not to mention morally debatable. What would the city have done with a boatload of raccoons? And how would we have stopped more from coming in?

Thomas’s motion was shelved. It was a win for raccoons.

“Nobody, it appears, wants to accept the incredible cost or responsibility of ridding private homes of raccoons,” a reporter wrote afterward. “The problem is there, they all admit — but it’s somebody else’s problem.”

Over the next few years, Toronto’s raccoon population seemed to surge.

One raccoon was spotted entering St. Paul’s Anglican Church on Bloor Street on a Sunday after daybreak. Another was seen exiting the King subway during morning rush hour. A dozen more were ousted from Osgoode Hall.

By 1976, another controversy was brewing in East York, a lush borough east of downtown that had become a raccoon hot spot.

Forty years earlier, the borough had made news after police were called to rescue a cat from a tree and it turned out to be a raccoon — “the first raccoon we’ve had in East York,” an officer said. A lot had changed.

If Toronto city council had taken the laissez-faire approach to raccoon management, East York would choose the nuclear option.

Charlotte Brittain had been dealing with raccoons on her property in East York for three decades, but the summer of 1976 was the worst she’d seen.

“If we had 10 or 12 traps in our yard, we would fill them every night”

Brittain captured 80 raccoons that season with a rented trap. She baited them with eggs, but at 79 cents a dozen it got expensive, so she switched to apples. “If we had 10 or 12 traps in our yard, we would fill them every night,” she told a reporter that summer.

She and other East York residents had been releasing trapped raccoons into nearby ravines, but they believed the animals were finding their way back. Brittain had replaced her back porch twice because of raccoon damage and spent several hundred dollars on a new roof.

These complaints led to a stunning political decision on Sept. 8, 1976, when East York councillors voted to “destroy” all raccoons and skunks trapped by homeowners in the borough.

“East York declares war on skunks and raccoons,” read a front-page headline.

These were not sick or injured creatures; they were animals deemed to be a “nuisance” for setting paw on private property.

Council passed the motion in an 8-1 vote. Raccoons would be taken to the borough’s animal control centre and “destroyed.”

Alderman Ray Ireland, the lone dissenter, shouted in protest. “You’re a great bunch of Christians … you want to kill!” Later, Ireland told reporters he was “totally against this blood lust some people have to get rid of animals.”

“Why can’t they just take them out 50 or 60 miles from Metro and release them in the woods?”

The decision sparked weeks of backlash, including dozens of angry letters published in newspapers condemning the “diabolic” legislation and harsh actions of the councillors.

“Perhaps people who prefer a city to be nothing more than wall-to-wall people should not live near ravines,” one resident wrote.

“What animals will council kill off next?”

The decision drew criticism from other notable locals. “I don’t like killing anything,” said Mel Lastman, then mayor of North York. “Why can’t they just take them out 50 or 60 miles from Metro and release them in the woods?”

The vote would influence the outcome of the East York mayoral election later that year. Alan Redway, a former mayor and council member, recalled in an interview that his office received a deluge of complaints about the plan to trap and kill animals — not from activists or special interest groups, but from regular residents. Redway had initially voted in favour of “knocking off the raccoons,” he said, but changed his mind after the backlash.

Later that year, Redway ran for mayor against Howard Chandler, the councillor who had introduced the unpopular motion. Chandler campaigned on a promise to go ahead with the cull. Redway vowed to leave the raccoons alone. Redway won.

While animals were certainly causing problems in the community, one thing was clear, Redway said. “Most people were for preserving the raccoons.”

In a rare example of human neutrality on raccoons, Redway said he doesn’t have strong feelings about them. “I could take them or leave them.” But he kept his promise.

In 1999, Ontario introduced a new law that would ramp up the tension between humans and raccoons and complicate the question of what to do with nuisance wildlife.

To curb the spread of disease, the ministry placed a limit of one kilometre on how far raccoons could be relocated. That meant no more trapping animals in Toronto and taking them to cottage country.

There were solid reasons behind the policy change. In the 1990s, a massive raccoon rabies outbreak was heading north from the United States. Rabies is fatal in humans without treatment, and the antidote is expensive. The U.S. was spending $300 million annually to manage the disease. Limiting animal movement was an effective strategy to control the spread.

But as people soon learned, options for relocating a raccoon within a kilometre of an urban home are almost nonexistent. Where are you supposed to leave the animal — at a public park? In a schoolyard? On a neighbour’s lawn? Even if you found a place, raccoons are skilled navigators. They would likely find their way back.

Around this time, ministry scientists published research that finally put an official number on the city’s raccoon population. Toronto was home to seven to 20 raccoons per square kilometre on average, and an astounding 100 raccoons per square kilometre in some parts of Scarborough.

The Toronto figures sound low compared to the wild guesstimates that had floated around through the decades, but Rick Rosatte, the scientist who conducted the studies, said they’re high when you consider that large swaths of the urban landscape — concrete, highrises, rivers — are unfit for raccoon living.

Scarborough, undeniably, had a lot of raccoons — 100 per square kilometre would translate to 150 raccoons in the Annex, 200 in Roncesvalles, or 400 in Riverdale.

It’s no wonder some residents felt helpless when the one-kilometre rule came in. When you can’t relocate a raccoon damaging your property, what option is left?

Now for a plot twist. Toronto did kill nuisance raccoons. Lots of them.

Despite the backlash over East York’s plan to “destroy” captured animals in the 1970s, in some parts of the GTA, including Toronto and Scarborough, humane societies and city animal control departments were quietly euthanizing nuisance raccoons into the ’90s and early 2000s.

The routine killing of problem raccoons gradually fell out of fashion as a new industry emerged: the humane animal removal business.

In Toronto, the most notable figure in wildlife removal is Brad Gates, a broad-shouldered, mild-mannered man who grew up caring for sick and injured wildlife in the backyard of his family home in Scarborough, the most raccoon-dense neighbourhood in Toronto.

Gates adores raccoons. He is also allergic to them, a hazard that has not stopped him from entering thousands of attics, garages and sheds to safely remove them from human spaces.

On a warm day earlier this year, Gates, 61, knocked on the door of a suburban home in Markham. He was dressed in a grey company T-shirt, navy cargo shorts and sturdy hiking shoes. His daughter, Cassandra Gates, who is 27 and has worked with him for eight years, wore a matching AAA Gates Wildlife shirt with the company logo, which features a raccoon peering down from a chimney.

The 64-year-old homeowner who answered the door explained that she had been hearing noises in the ceiling above her bedroom for the past week. Her daughter had spotted the culprit peeking out from what looked like a hole in the roof a few days earlier: a raccoon. The homeowner hadn’t gotten much sleep since.

Gates retrieved his tallest ladder and climbed up to the gabled roof. His boots crunched on the asphalt shingles as he searched for clues, putting himself into the mind of a raccoon. Raccoons target the same weaknesses wherever they go: plastic air vents, soffits, rotted wood. The entry point was easy to find. Gates located a chewed up vent and saw a tuft of white-tipped fur attached to the edge.

Over the next 90 minutes, the father-daughter team entered the attic, located two six-week-old kits and placed them in a secure “baby box” near the den’s entry point for the mother to retrieve. They donned tool belts and returned to the roof with power drills to secure all possible entry points with wire mesh netting. Finally, they installed a one-way door through which the raccoon could leave the attic, but not come back. The price tag for this work was $1,000 and included follow-up visits.

Gates would return to the house the next morning to check the baby box. Mothers nearly always retrieved their kits, but if abandoned Gates would try to find a surrogate raccoon mother or take them to a rescue centre. When he was certain there were no animals left in the attic, he would remove the one-way door and secure the final vent. He encourages customers to call him if they hear any further noises — he doesn’t want a stuck raccoon dying in an attic.

Gates calls his approach “passive removal” and he has refined it over the past 40 years. In the 1980s, when he was among the few companies offering a humane solution, it was a tough sell. People couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea that the animal would be left on their property. They wanted it taken far away.

Back then, few companies were trying to reunite the baby raccoons with the mother. Today the Gates approach is the primary method of animal removal used in Toronto. There are companies that will trap and relocate or euthanize nuisance raccoons — which can be done, legally, under certain conditions — but they are the exception, not the standard.

“Trapping and relocating or trapping and killing the animal — that approach still dominates”

Toronto is unlike America in this regard. In Chicago and D.C., two of the most raccoon-dense cities in the U.S., raccoons removed from private property are routinely euthanized, according to John Griffin, senior director of urban wildlife programs for the Humane Society of the United States.

“Trapping and relocating or trapping and killing the animal — that approach still dominates,” Griffin said.

In Toronto, residents are encouraged to remove attractants from their properties and secure vulnerable points in their homes, rather than demand removal. That’s the feedback you’ll get if you turn to the city, the Ministry of Natural Resources, or wildlife experts for help with raccoon problems.

It’s good advice, but Toronto has some incredibly persistent raccoons, and conflict is not always preventable. Animals may be drawn to your property even if you’re doing everything right.

A few years ago, I heard from a young man — we’ll call him Danny — whose roommate had discovered a raccoon eating from their fridge. The animal had torn open a bedroom window screen in their apartment near Bloor and Bathurst, found the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and consumed an entire carton of eggs.

“We were annoyed,” Danny wrote, “but also amazed.”

The landlord replaced the screen, but soon after, the raccoon tore through again. The landlord installed anti-rodent screens, but a few weeks later, the raccoon “strong-armed” its way through, Danny said. “He bent the screen out of place, came down the stairs, into the kitchen, opened the fridge and ate four eggs before he was discovered.

“Thankfully it’s cold out now so we aren’t opening our windows. But what are we going to do in the spring? Metal bars?”

“Thankfully it’s cold out now so we aren’t opening our windows. But what are we going to do in the spring? Metal bars?”

Gates understands the stress that animals in a house can cause. He once responded to a raccoon call at the home of a science teacher whose bedroom ceiling was speckled with bullet holes. The man had been living with raccoons in his attic for weeks. After many sleepless nights, he had shot up the ceiling. No animals were harmed, but the drywall was a mess.

Gates says that in his experience, most people don’t want to hurt raccoons. They just want them gone.

Even though Gates encounters people who have seen the worst raccoons can do, he says he sees more affection for them than dislike. He believes Toronto has chosen a side on the love-hate spectrum. Love.

Although, he added, the love can falter in years of increased human-wildlife conflict.

Humans have been feeding raccoons, intentionally and unintentionally, for as long as we’ve shared space on earth.

In 20th-century cities, their habit of feasting on our garbage, along with their slight resemblance to a certain bear, earned them the nickname trash panda.

In 2002, the city of Toronto introduced its first organic waste receptacle. Known locally as the green bin, it became an instant hit with animals.

Put yourself in the mind of a hungry raccoon. For years, humans had been combining food scraps and all manner of waste in the same plastic bags, making the search for edible morsels something like a treasure hunt. Now all the food was in one convenient place.

“I’m ready to have a breakdown, the raccoons are winning, you know?”

Within months of the rollout, newspapers were publishing reports of animals breaking into the bins. The latch was virtually useless. Raccoons needed only to knock the container down and its top would pop open.

“Pest proof? Not exactly,” read one newspaper headline.

Homeowners were furious, and many directed their anger at the animals. “I’m ready to have a breakdown,” said a Scarborough resident whose new bin was overturned before her first collection day. Already, she said, “the raccoons are winning, you know?” The city made a lock available for purchase at local hardware stores, but the damage was done.

The next decade was a time of highs and lows for raccoon-human relations.

Humans grew to appreciate raccoon behaviour on a wider scale, and from a comfortable distance, through viral videos and social media. One Toronto raccoon became famous after it was filmed climbing a crane, while another, dead raccoon — affectionately named Conrad — had a shrine built around its corpse on Yonge Street. A television documentary named Toronto the raccoon capital of the world, a claim to fame the city has largely embraced.

There were dark moments, too.

In 2011, a Toronto man was arrested and charged with animal cruelty after a neighbour caught him beating baby raccoons with a shovel to protect his garden.

Bombastic Toronto mayor Rob Ford, never one to shy away from controversy, said in 2014 that the city had “a serious raccoon problem,” though he would not support euthanizing them.

“I’m not a big raccoon fan, I’ll tell you that straight up"
— late mayor Rob Ford

“I’m not a big raccoon fan, I’ll tell you that straight up,” Ford said. But when asked what should be done, Ford shrugged. “I don’t have the answer.”

In an opinion poll, more than half of Toronto residents surveyed said they would support a humane cull to control the population.

In 2015, the city released a long-awaited staff report that finally, definitively, found someone to blame for a century of raccoon woes.

It was us. Humans were the problem, not raccoons. We created the monster, the report concluded, by failing to secure our trash properly, leaving birdseed and pet food in our yards and in some cases intentionally feeding them. Food sources bring raccoons closer to human dwellings than they would otherwise dare to go, and well-fed raccoons breed more.

A month later, freshly minted mayor John Tory famously declared war on raccoons, vowing to launch a new weapon in the “fight” against raccoon nation: a green bin with a raccoon-resistant lock.

In the months after the new green bin rollout, residents worried that by removing a primary food source for raccoons, Toronto had killed them off, or sent them fleeing to the suburbs.

That wasn’t the case. Raccoons would outsmart us once again, as I learned during a messy summer filming them in my backyard. My investigation proved that some raccoons in high-density areas like Scarborough and East York had learned to open the lock. On grainy trail camera footage, I watched as a mother raccoon pulled my green bin to the ground, turned to stare directly into the camera — as if to say, “ha!” — and used her human-like paws to twist the lock and open the lid. She and her two kits feasted on my table scraps.

The city maintains that raccoon damage is not a significant problem with the new green bins, but 311 data suggested I wasn’t alone. In the three years after the rollout, residents made 472 complaints about the critters breaking into or damaging them.

That’s not exactly a win for humans.

Neil Loewen was walking through Union Station a few months ago when he looked up to see a striking pattern on the windowed ceiling.

At first glance, it looked like a design feature he’d never noticed, a decorative pattern in the glass above the pedestrian pathway in the opulent railway station. Looking closer, though, Loewen, a 33-year-old Toronto urban planner, realized he was looking at paw prints — specifically, raccoon paw prints. Hundreds of them.

The scene brought to mind visions of an army preparing for battle, or perhaps a parallel world in which raccoons run the show and humans are the invaders.

We now live in a world Frank Tozer could not have imagined. The Roxborough Road gardener did capture his invader, in the end. The raccoon was neither taken to the forest nor destroyed that summer in 1925. Instead, Tozer’s raccoon was donated to the Toronto Zoo. Imagine a city in which raccoons are so rare that the zoo welcomes donations.

Compare that with Toronto today, where raccoons can walk into a grocery store or ride the subway during morning rush hour, and citizens smile and maybe snap a photo but keep on walking.

Imagine a city 100 years from now. It’s tempting to ponder a post-apocalyptic world in which raccoons have taken over and are living in our houses and riding in our self-driving vehicles. They have installed a raccoon mayor at city hall and a raccoon premier at Queen’s Park. They have erected a statue of the unfortunate Conrad at Yonge-Dundas Square, now called Conrad the Raccoon Square.

Raccoons are the most adaptable species on the planet. Humans, not so much. While there has been no official population study since the 1990s, it’s safe to say the city has thousands of raccoons, more now than we did then, and the population is expected to surge globally as the planet warms.

Maybe raccoons have something to offer, something to teach us about the world and our place in it as we head toward a future altered by climate change.

At the very least, humans should be able to find a way to exist with raccoons that is something between love and hate, cuddling and killing. Our brains are much bigger, after all.

For now.