Raccoon Caught Lounging in Woman's Hammock: 'Excuse Me!'

A raccoon has become an internet star after it was filmed lounging in a woman's hammock, having scaled an apartment building to reach it.

A video of the laid-back mammal was posted on Twitter on September 8 by Philadelphia resident Sarah McAnulty.

"Excuse me, who taught the raccoon on my back porch how to use a hammock??," she wrote alongside the footage, which had been viewed over 780,000 times as of September 15.

In the clip, the raccoon can be seen nestled in McAnulty's hammock, occasionally biting the fabric and looking around inquisitively.

"This is on the third floor, too," McAnulty said in response to a comment. "Nothing can stop them!"

Raccoons are commonly found throughout North America in all sorts of habitats including woods, wetlands, suburbs, parks and cities. It's thought there are up to one million raccoons in the state of Minnesota alone.

In areas populated by humans, raccoons have earned a reputation for skilfully foraging food from trash cans and other sources. This ability is partly due to their nimble, hand-like paws that are adept at grasping things.

Raccoons have a highly varied diet, eating all sorts of foods including plants, nuts, fruit, other small animals and various scraps they can find in dumpsters.

Their tendency to sneak food from trash cans, coupled with their distinctive black eye markings that make them appear to be wearing a face mask, has resulted in raccoons developing a mischievous reputation.

While raccoons may be considered cute, they are also primary carriers of rabies in North America and can become aggressive if provoked. The Humane Society charity states that wild animals should not be approached or handled.

As for the raccoon that had made itself at home in the hammock, McAnulty checked back on the animal later and found that it had fallen asleep and stayed in the hammock for the rest of the night.

Despite the cute video, McAnulty told The Philadelphia Inquirer: "I want to make sure that we are not encouraging Philadelphians to invite raccoons to their porches or touch them. That sounds like a great way to get rabies."

It is not the first time a raccoon has made itself at home in a hammock. In 2020, author Aaron Reynolds took to Twitter to describe an incident in which he inadvertently climbed into his backyard hammock with a raccoon, thinking it was his pet cat. The Twitter thread gained tens of thousands of likes.

The Toronto Wildlife Centre states that although raccoons may appear to be bold with humans, they are naturally cautious of people—even if they don't run away at first.