While FREAKIN' raccoons—including, but not limited to, the Elusive Nevins Street Raccoon™—are known for utilizing the New York City subway system, turns out the critters are also happy to go above ground and take the bus.
Staten Island bus driver Joseph Scarangello spotted a raccoon attempting to hop on an S44 bus December 27th at the Yukon bus depot. The Trash Panda held up traffic for 15 minutes, said Scarangello, who caught it on camera after pulling into the depot, first reported by Staten Island Live.
"We made a joke that the driver won't let him on because he doesn't have his MetroCard," Scarangello, a 19-year veteran of the express bus to Manhattan, told Gothamist. Good one.
Bus drivers eventually had to call the NYPD to relocate the creature. Scarangello said they lured it into a garbage can and removed it from the premises. We can only assume they took it to a nice trash farm upstate. (Police who captured the Elusive Nevins Street Raccoon™ earlier this month released it into Prospect Park.)
Last year, the bus drivers caught a raccoon sleeping on a parked bus at the depot, and Scarangello decided to name the raccoon Rocky. The namesake became a running joke among Staten Island bus drivers, with every raccoon spotted on the depot premises lovingly called Rocky.
"We named him Rocky," he said. "It's just an ongoing thing with us."
Rocky, as the bus drivers are adamant on calling him, joins a long list of famed urban wildlife. There's runaway goats, a rogue duck, and opossums. Raccoons caused the most subway delays last year—with incidents steadily rising since 2016, THE CITY reported. But in Staten Island, Scarangello says his bus routes are mostly plagued with turkeys or deer.
"We're absolutely loaded in Staten Island like we never were before with deer all over the place," he said. "We also have turkeys. Flocks and flocks of turkeys that cross the street and hold up traffic for five minutes because they walk really slow."
"The raccoon, for us in Staten Island, was new," as far as spurring any bus hold-ups, he said. "It's just the funniest thing."
