Warmer winter riling up raccoons

BY MATTHEW LYSIAK
DAILY NEWS WRITER

Thursday, December 13th 2007, 4:00 AM

Brooklyn residents have been dealing with an unexpected side effect of the recent climate change - raccoons.

Sightings of raccoons are way up in Brooklyn at a time when they should be down, and some are blaming the strange behavior on warm winters.

Whatever the cause, residents have had enough of the masked menaces.

"I deal with these raccoons all summer, but they are usually far less trouble this time of year," said hairstylist Chad Nardine, 28, of Bay Ridge who has had the critters hiss at him when he takes out his garbage.

"This is kind of crazy. I mean, we are in December and these crazy creatures are running around like it is July."

One inconvenient truth may be that warmer-than-usual winters are throwing raccoons out of kilter, causing confusion in their biological sleep clocks, which are set by the timing of the cold weather.

"Seasons are lasting longer and unusual things are happening," said New York State Department of Environmental Conservation spokesperson Laurie O'Connell. "It is safe to say that mild winters are one of the reasons they are still out and about."

The strange abundance of December raccoons are even leaving tracks across the blogosphere as the garbage eaters appear in a broad belt stretching from Cobble Hill to Prospect Park and down to Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights.

"I saw a raccoon running across the street ... on Marine Ave.," posted a blogger on Bayridgetalk.com. "Went to take out the garbage yesterday and I have a raccoon lying in my garbage pail in my backyard and it scared the heck out of me."

Last spring, the raccoon problem got so bad that Councilman Vince Gentile (D-Bay Ridge) began handing out supplies of Critter Ridder, a humane raccoon repellant - but demand quickly exceeded supply .

"It's something that a lot of people are still dealing with, and the city isn't offering us any help," said Gentile. "It looks like now we might have to keep a supply of Critter Ridder into fall and early winter."