toronto raccoons

Family of raccoons caught nabbing Toronto resident's food delivery in hilarious video

Amid the darkest depths of lockdown, streaming services and food delivery apps became everyone's best friends, there to entertain and sate us in the absence of actual socialization and nights out eating and drinking at our favourite local haunts.

Given the uptick in the use of Door Dash and Uber Eats in the last 18 months, along with the fact that wild animals started reclaiming Toronto's much quieter streets as their own, it's surprising that incidents like one recently caught on video have not been more common.

In footage shared to YouTube and then Reddit this weekend, bystanders walking past a house in the Lower Jarvis and Esplanade area witnessed and managed to film a phenomenon very evocative of our lovely, trash panda-filled metropolis: a group of raccoons, the city's unofficial mascots, mowing down on someone's meal that they had yet to retrieve from their porch after it was delivered.

"Three raccoons find a contactless delivery of Door Dash food before the people who ordered it," the filmer wrote along with the covertly shot minute-and-a-half-long video.

"They seem to have enjoyed the nice hot meal."

"We were trying to keep them off the food at first but after about ten minutes of trying to keep them away from the porch (and losing the battle), we figured the people who placed the order had fallen asleep," the poster, who goes by DJ DTM, told blogTO.

He and his accomplice, who had been watching the raccoons before the delivery arrived late Saturday night, then decided, outnumbered, to film the masked bandits in the midst of their crime.

"I set my camera on the fence and just watched the action unfold," he said, adding that after he and his friend left to continue on their walk, they walked past again about half an hour later to find the food bag still there on the porch, completely destroyed.

Even before the driver had set the fated late night snack down on the porch, it was easy to see what was about to transpire.

"A raccoon was climbing on [the driver's] bike and trying to climb into his delivery bag when his back was turned," the Reddit user said. "We anticipated what was about to happen when they dropped the order off and took off before the people answered the door."

No word yet from whoever ordered the food, who despite now being out $20 or $30, can be glad that their abandoned dinner did not go completely to waste.


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