The noise outside the open window sounded like a strange communication of peeps and growls, as if a small group of feral R2-D2s were huddling to plot their next move. And indeed, they were.
When your Bernalwood editor turned on the back yard floodlights to look outside a few days ago, we interrupted a mama raccoon just as she was instructing her four cubs on the proper technique used to invade my home and plunder our pantry.
Although our stylish coyote gets all the headlines, Bernal Heights is also a thriving habitat for raccoons, and raccoons are shitty neighbors. They’re smart, they’re fearless, they work in teams, and they have digits that approximate opposable thumbs. They’re also rather cute, which is why some wags prefer to call them “trash pandas.”
Anyway, when Bernalwood turned the lights on, Mama Raccoon gave a pissed-off look that said “Ugh. Can’t you see we we’re working here???”
PHOTO: Telstar Logistics
Bernalwood 
Over on Heyman Ave, a family of four of these dudes lives under our neighbors deck which is adjacent to our backyard.
We have an indoor/outdoor kitty with her own cat door and countless times, raccoons have come in and opened the drawer which has the cat food, and then either gorged on the spot or tried to pull the bag off food back through the cat door. We now lock the cat door at night, but sometimes get home late to raccoon footprints all over our back room. 😛
Fingers crossed, they seem to get along with all the neighbor cats. One stray who frequents our backyard was recently just laying about while a few raccoons were within a foot of it.
I recently read that city raccoons are now smarter than their country kin because they figure out hinges, latches, etc to get inside garbage bins and houses. Bears smash to get at food. Raccoons use their brains and flexible paws.
Because raccoons seek out water to wet their paws to be more sensitive hunting for food, they can trash a yard. I leave a bowl of water and they leave everything else alone.