14 Raccoons Confront Dad And Son In Encounter That 'Feels Like End Of Days'

“This was such a good idea!” the boy said after the critters gathered in broad daylight to stare them down in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
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A group of 14 raccoons emerged from the bushes to confront a father and son recently ― and the moment went viral. (See the photo and video below.)

Oh yeah, a coyote also showed up.

“This is insane,” Marc Estoque said in the video while he was out with his son in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. “It feels like end of days.”

The raccoons spooked their dog and excited Estoque’s son. “This was such a good idea!” the boy said.

“Uhh, I hope so,” the father can be heard responding. His incredible photo is the screensaver of the clip:

Estoque told SFGate: “It was so surreal...a posse of bandits...like out of a movie. And then two minutes later, there was a coyote. I was waiting for the unicorn to pop out.”

He counted 14 raccoons in all ― including four out of frame in the bushes.

The emboldened raccoons, who are usually nocturnal and skittish, were likely trolling for snacks. Humans feeding them have eliminated the animals’ fear, San Francisco Animal Care and Control Executive Director Virginia Donohue told KPIX.

But that needs to stop for the good of man and beast.

“People think they’re helping the raccoon,” Donohue said to the CBS affiliate. “They feed the raccoon, but if the raccoon gets to be too aggressive, eventually the parks will have to trap them, and once they’re trapped they have to be euthanized because you can’t relocate them.”

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