A White Rock man came home from a Costa Rican vacation to find unwanted guests had ransacked his house: overturning plants, smashing glassware, and even urinating and defecating on the carpet.
"My neighbour phoned me, on mycell phone and said, 'Kenny, I think there was a burglar in your house,'" said Ken Rechik.
He caught the next flight home and when he arrived, he quickly realized all the evidence points to a familiar foe.
"Again, I just felt violated," said Rechik. "For the last three years I've had trouble with raccoons."
He's had wire mesh installed on the roof, but the pesky critters still manage to get into the attic.
It appears they fell through the ceiling into the garage, where they found an open window leading to the rest of the house.
Once inside the living area, they left a trail of destruction that even shocked Elena Cyr, a house cleaner Rechik hired to help him clean up.
"You cannot compare it to anything else that I've done before in all my years of experience," she said. "It's really bad."
Adding up the cleaning fees, repairs and the cost of replacing damaged items, Rechik estimates the raccoons have cost him about $4,000.
"When they're aggressive like that, I think they should be trapped and moved to a forest," he said.
Rechik did complain to the City of White Rock and said staff referred him to the provincial conservation website.
Randy Celinski of AAA Wildlife Control specializes in minor renovations to keep pests out of houses, and he said there are a lot of raccoons in the area, but that's not unique in Metro Vancouver.
"Anywhere in the city, the animals are thriving and White Rock is no exception," he said. "There's a healthy population of raccoons."
Rechik found his dining room window unlatched and thinks the raccoons let themselves out and made the 10-foot drop to freedom when the party was over.
