Rac­coon Dis­cov­ered in Din­ing Com­mons Ceil­ing

MISHAWAKA--Sun­day af­ter­noon, Sept. 12, a rac­coon was dis­cov­ered in the Din­ing Com­mons. Sev­eral stu­dents and staff no­ticed a striped tail hang­ing down from a sec­tion of the ceil­ing that ap­peared to be buck­ling un­der the weight of the an­i­mal it was sup­port­ing. Linda Llera, a Sodexo cook, was work­ing at the time and was among the peo­ple who saw the un­ex­pected vis­i­tor. 

“Its tail kept go­ing up and down from the ceil­ing for three hours,” Llera said. “It was the first time I’ve ever worked with a rac­coon… I did­n’t re­ally en­joy it much.”

Llera passed on in­for­ma­tion about the rac­coon in the ceil­ing to Sodexo Gen­eral Man­ager Jen­nifer Moritz, as well as cam­pus safety, who, af­ter con­firm­ing the pres­ence of the rac­coon, ad­vised they reach out to main­te­nance as well. Moritz de­cided to seek out help from some­one who reg­u­larly dealt with wildlife and would re­lo­cate the rac­coon quickly and with­out harm.

“I called for two hours try­ing to find any­body to come get it,” Moritz said. “A guy from Niles called me back from Awe­some Crit­ter Get­ters and said he would meet me here.”

Upon ar­rival, the com­pany rep­re­sen­ta­tive dis­cov­ered an en­try point in the roof that the rac­coon used and set a live trap for when the rac­coon de­cided to leave. On Tues­day morn­ing, Sept. 14, the rac­coon was found in the trap and was re­trieved by the Awe­some Crit­ter Get­ters rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

“I told [the rep­re­sen­ta­tive] that we have to save it, we can’t be killing it,” Moritz said. “He told me that he re­leased it into one of the wildlife ar­eas around here Tues­day af­ter­noon.”

Moritz also con­firmed that the hole the rac­coon used for en­try was patched up by main­te­nance to pre­vent more crit­ters crawl­ing into the ceil­ing of the din­ing hall.