Possums and raccoons and skunks, oh my!
According to the Midwood Civic Action Council (MCAC), the neighborhood is one of those “where the wild things are,” a fact of life that had the group’s president, Sandy Abby Aboulafia, making a fervent plea to a representative of the mayor’s Community Affairs Unit to help curb the increase in non-domesticated animals in the heart of Brooklyn neighborhoods.
“Raccoons, possums and now skunks,” Aboulafia told Charles Glover, the CAU’s Brooklyn borough director. “We are not happy about it. All of these kinds of animals have a lot of babies, so their population is going to be growing and growing. They’re all over Brooklyn. We need an active agency from the mayor to catch these animals and take them up to the Catskills, where they came from.”
Aboulafia said she has lived in Brooklyn “My entire life, and we never had this, never. We used to have wild dogs running in the streets. But, they cleaned that up. Now, we have other animals running in the streets. I don’t want to see them, meet them, know them.”
The city is following standard procedures with respect to wild animals, said Glover. He told the group that the city, “Depends upon the local community to report it,” in order to determine if there is a problem. “One animal in an area is not a big problem. However, if you get 10 or 12 sitings, and they’re looking vicious, we need to know about it right away so we can take action.
“If it’s a dangerous looking animal right away, call 911, and they’ll come out,” he added.
Members of the group said they hadn’t found the city particularly responsive to their calls regarding wild animals. One man said he called 311 and was told, “Call only if it’s vicious. If not, you have to pay for an exterminator to come and get it.”
“We don’t want to wait till they are vicious,” Aboulafia interjected. “I want to get rid of them before they attack.”
City agencies try to “pass the buck, because it costs money,” opined another MCAC member, who complained, “If you call one agency, they tell you to call another agency, and nobody does anything. What we want is for more animal control people to come to Brooklyn, and look at it.”
“If you call 311 and they don’t address it, at least document it, so if it becomes a problem, we know where they are,” Glover told the group.
“We’re not on a citywide witch hunt for raccoons,” he added. “If they get dangerous, the city is going to come and take care of it for you.”
What should residents look for? If nocturnal animals such as raccoons are walking around openly in broad daylight, “that’s a sign that’s something wrong,” Glover said. “Never try to approach them.”