toronto raccoons

Chonky Toronto raccoons refuse to leave porch in hilarious video

Eleven severely obese raccoons walk into an enclosed porch...

That's it. There's no punchline. This is what actually happened to prompt a recent raccoon rescue mission at one Toronto home.

Gates Wildlife Control is a Scarborough-based, humane wildlife removal company that maintains an amazing YouTube channel in which workers document some of their more interesting (slash adorable) animal encounters.

On Thursday, the channel dropped a brand new video called "Eleven Raccoons Stuck Inside Porch," shot by Gates Wildlife Field Supervisor Joel.

The roughly three and a half-minute-long clip takes shows Joel entering a Toronto home that's under construction and essentially crashing what looks like a mass raccoon snuggle party on its enclosed porch.

"The house was under full renovation and the back door was left open one night," explains the video's caption."Once inside, the raccoons made their way through a broken window leading into the front porch of the home."

"One by one, the raccoons must have followed each other into the porch area," the description continues. "The window was too high for the raccoons to get back inside and the front door to the porch was closed, leaving this group of raccoons stuck for the night."

Stuck as they may have been, the animals sure didn't seem to be in a hurry to get out once they could. In fact, it took quite a bit of (literal) prodding to convince these thicc nightbois to leave.

And when I say thicc, I mean morbidly obese. Not trying to fat shame anyone here, but these raccoons are so round they look more like giant chincillas or small grizzly bears.

Joel tried his best to usher the cute invaders out the door, gently tapping them with a pole and saying things like "let's go! out the front..." and "come on, out the door... go!"

While this would likely be enough to send most wild animals racing off the property, raccoons don't really fear humans all that much around these parts. It's as if they know we can't outsmart them or something.

Eventually, one by one, the raccoons did get annoyed with Joel's prodding and wobble out the door — but not before giving the wildlife rescue worker (and subsequently us) some serious laughs with their attempts to stay inside.

The rotund raccoons are now safely outdoors and the porch has been sealed off to prevent them from sneaking back in.

Something tells me they'll be just fine in the cold with all of that extra insulation.

Lead photo by

Gates Wildlife Control


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