N.Y. COMMUTERS CONFRONTED BY RACCOONS AND SKUNKS

Them thar furry masked bandits and some polecats are frightening them thar New York city slicker critters.

BEWARE OF TED!: NICKNAMED RACCOON IS VICIOUSLY STALKING METRO-NORTH COMMUTERS AT MARBLE HILL
Other masked bandits are at the Bedford Park subway; the mammal is very intelligent and will eat garbage

By Jennifer H. Cunningham

New York Daily News
October 2, 2013

Masked bandits are stalking commuters at two Bronx train stations, jumping out of nowhere to terrorize riders before beating a hasty retreat.

Relax, everyone — they’re raccoons.

Several of the banded beasts have pretty much taken over the Metro-North railroad’s Marble Hill station — and one is so menacing that passengers have given him the nickname “Ted.”

Cujo, of course, was taken.

“It was huge,” said Milagros Maldonado, 28, of Morris Heights said after a large raccoon - possibly Ted - menaced her Tuesday night as she tried to enter the station at W. 225th St.

“I was scared. I started screaming! I don’t want this to happen to me again.”

Raccoons are native to Europe and are known for their intelligence and ability to adapt easily — eating pretty much anything.

So in hopes of shooing raccoons like Ted, Community Board 8 got the Sanitation Department to clean the street and sidewalk in front of the station Tuesday.

“It’s a big problem,” Sergio Marquez, head of the board’s Environmental and Sanitation Committee. “The people are afraid, because the raccoons are just jumping out of the trees on people.”

Generally speaking, raccoons are as afraid of humans as some Metro-North riders are of them. But raccoons that don’t quickly flee from human-mammal encounters may be carrying rabies.

The same is true of skunks — yes, there are skunks there, too.

“It was pacing back and forth,” said Christine DeLeon of Tarrytown, who saw one of the smell-emitting jailbirds two weeks ago. “It looked like it was going to come up to the platform. I just backed away.”

The furry vermin infestation isn’t only confined to Marble Hill. Last month, Andre Mayes, 40, a stock worker from Yonkers, saw a vicious pack of Procyon lotors — that’s raccoons to you and — slipping through a guardrail into the Bedford Park subway station.

“It’s kind of unnerving,” Mayes said. “If you see six of them coming at you, you don’t know if they’re going to attack somebody.”

A Metro-North spokeswoman said the railroad hadn’t heard about Ted, but vowed to set traps if needed.

This week, riders who had not stared into the beady little eyes of Ted and his cohorts saw the raccoon plague as just another natural disaster.

“You’ve got sewer rats on the subway, and raccoons on the Metro-North,” one shrugged.