Avella to Raccoons: 'You're Next'

Sure, raccoons are great when confined to the pages of children's books or the lyrics of Beatles songs, but for many residents in northeast Queens, they're becoming a beast of a problem.

A scourge of everyone's least favorite masked vermin is taking over neighborhoods all over Queens, and Sen. Avella, D-Bayside and Assemblymen Andrew Hevesi, D-Forest Hills, plan to pass legislation to curb the increasing population of the contentious critters, which has gone unchecked for more than a decade.

Though a certain number of raccoons in parks and wooded areas is to be expected, Avella said, the animals have proliferated in recent years.

“The fact that the raccoons are spreading to mid-Queens just goes to show how much of a problem it is," he said.

Avella's legislation would strengthen , which corrected a technical flaw that required the city to respond only to complaints regarding raccoons that were rabid or otherwise dangerous.

The new legislation would obligate the the Department of Health to remove raccoons - rabid or not - based on complaints by city residents.

Avella said he also plans to add a requirement that the animals be neutered before they are re-released, in order to address the more long-term issue of overpopulation.

Avella said that though the details of where the raccoons will go once caught have yet to be worked out, he is adamant that they will not be harmed.

“This is not a geese situation,” said, referring to last summer's controversial in which the USDA rounded up and killed nearly 400 Canada geese in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. 

Susan Seinfeld, the district manager for Community Board 11, said though she's also fielded plenty of complaints regarding roving raccoons in Little Neck, she hasn't heard anything since the summer started. So far, she said, the issue hasn't been that the raccoons have been rabid, only that they've been too bold.

"They do get themselves into trouble," she said.

Avella said he knows of no data regarding the specific number of raccoons currently roaming Queens. But one thing he does know is that there's a lot of them.

“We’re not trapping them, we’re not removing them, we’re not neutering them," he said. "They’re just breeding.”