Our raccoon compatriots here in Toronto may be lovable and hilarious, but they also have a habit of causing some pretty serious trouble, whether by breaking into our cafes, stores and homes, by stopping busy traffic or by causing widespread power outages.
The latest in this never-ending series of raccoon-related hijinks in the city was on Thursday, when one of the furry critters managed to stall commuters in their tracks when he or she ventured, well, onto said tracks.
In the midst of morning rush hour around 7:45 a.m., the TTC received reports of a raccoon at track level near Davisville Station, prompting personnel to suspend subway service on a portion of Line 1 while they jumped down and attempted to coax the wild animal out of the way.
TTC spokesperson Stuart Green tells blogTO that despite a supervisor and special constables doing their best to move the little guy along, the raccoon run-in resulted in a 45-minute delay — unfortunately, just one of multiple significant disruptions in the city’s subway network in the last week or so.
One passenger snapped a photo of what appears to be the raccoon in question and shared it to Reddit, garnering everything from light-hearted jokes about our resident raccoons to complaints about the holdups this particular one caused.
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Some hoped that the raccoon was shooed away safely, while others wondered why transit had to be shut down for an extended period over a single animal. “Does the highway shut down when there is roadkill?” one of the less sensitive comments from a frustrated traveller reads.
As Green explains, “the concern with running over the animal, other than the obvious, is that it could get caught in the wheel/braking assembly, creating a safety risk.”
He added that “animal incursions are, sadly, common in the open-cut parts of our network,” and said that, in this case, a total of 15 shuttle buses were dispatched to supplement the gap in service while subway trains short-turned.
He, like many online, also couldn’t help but find a bit of levity in the hiccup, being as peak Toronto as it was.
“Not to diminish the inconvenience to our customers, but is this not the most Toronto thing you’ll hear today? A TTC delay caused by a trespassing trash panda,” he said.
Raccoon encounters on and around TTC vehicles are not at all rare, with many videos and stories of raccoons attempting to board streetcars, successfully getting on subway trains, and, yes, wandering around stations and tracks.
And earlier this week, a cat ended up hampered service along the 504 King line when it darted underneath a streetcar, but was thankfully saved by a troupe of helpful commuters.
Harder to forgive than both the clueless feline and above raccoon was the GFL dump truck driver who inadvertently tore down streetcar wiring over King and Spadina on Tuesday, leading to the continued closure of the entire intersection.
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