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Elusive Nevins Street Subway Raccoon SPOTTED During Evening Commute
By
Claire Lampen
Published Dec 18, 2019
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Courtesy of Amy Jacobus
By
Claire Lampen
Published Dec 18, 2019
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Up from the depths of the subway's fetid underbelly, clawing its way up the concrete walls with tiny man-like mitts, it's the Nevins Street Raccoon, here to gather data for his colleagues, which they will use in their battle against timely train service.
Gothamist tipster Amy Jacobus reports seeing the Nevins Street Raccoon around 8 p.m. Tuesday at the eponymous 2/3/4/5 subway station, which is located in Downtown Brooklyn: When her "big, crowded train" pulled up into the station and the doors opened, here's this large and "healthy" specimen scrabbling around at the end of the platform. "I yelled, 'Raccoon! Raccoon!'" she recalled, and whoa, were people excited. One of Jacobus's fellow riders proclaimed he would "give it a snack." This man reportedly identified himself as a Midwesterner, by way of explaining his unique capacity to hand-feed a wild animal renowned both as primary rabies carriers and as actively hostile to most other creatures. (Note: As a Midwesterner, I can't think of anything that would make us, as a unit, more skilled raccoon liaisons than the rest of you.) The trash panda wasn't interested, though, and reportedly scampered toward the tracks.
Jacobus explained that the raccoon "didn't seem crazy or anything," just a raccoon doing raccoon things. What kinds of things are those? Well, garbage feasting, for one; discreetly cataloguing minute details about human demeanor, behavior, tics, etc., for another. You know, stuff like, how many times does the countdown clock have to refresh arrival times for the same train — it's coming in two minutes; sorry make that five minutes; maybe three minutes? lol seven minutes bitch — before people start stamping their feet and muttering insults and furiously tweeting at NYCT Subway. Our finely fingered friend will lock all this info inside his mind bank, then skitter back down to his nest. He will share his findings with his fellow raccoons, and they will use it to architect new and innovative forms of subway chaos.
In recent months, the raccoons have consolidated their power to trigger train delays, with The City reporting that raccoon-related subway incidents more than doubled in 2019 compared to 2018, which saw 11 and five such SNAFUs respectively. The most bustling hotspots of subterranean dumpster weasel activity have been located along the L, A, and Q trains in Brooklyn and Queens, but actually, Nevins Street seems to stir up a fair amount of raccoon drama all on its own. MTA cameras captured a raccoon at this station in late November, mere weeks after another — or the same? — raccoon eluded authorities attempting to retrieve it from the tracks.
Could the little scavenger Jacobus saw Tuesday be the outlaw who eluded the MTA last month? I think probably yes; at the very least, it is a member of the same syndicate. A freakin' raccoon on the freakin' subway?? Yes, get used to it, they own us now.
Tagged
we the commuters
MTA
raccoons
Nevins Street
brooklyn
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subway raccoon
Claire Lampen
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