MPR Raccoon Reaches Roof After Climbing 23-Story Office Building, Becoming Internet Sensation

The MPR Raccoon has safely made it to the roof. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you missed quite a day on Twitter yesterday.
Twitter users were captivated yesterday while watching the perilous journey of a small raccoon as it scaled a 23-story office tower in St. Paul, Minnesota. Local reporters at Minnesota Public Radio dubbed it the #MPRraccoon and many people went to bed last night unsure of the little critter’s fate.

And while we’re still waiting on word about whether animal control has successfully captured it, at least the poor raccoon isn’t pulling any more Spider-Man hijinks. Or Mission Impossible hijinks, as it were.

The raccoon was first spotted on Monday in downtown St. Paul near the Town Square building just a couple of stories up. On Tuesday, maintenance workers tried to coax it down, but the raccoon became frightened and started scaling the side of the nearby UBS Tower.

Office workers in the UBS building started posting photos on Twitter to provide updates as they saw the raccoon scale the skyscraper. The animal was clearly hungry and tired, but kept climbing anyway.

By evening, the journey of the MPR raccoon had become an internet sensation with write-ups around the globe. Social media users had become heavily invested in the fate of this little guy.

Local TV news station KARE11 in Minnesota started streaming the raccoon’s movements and MPR was constantly updating its story throughout the day on Twitter and Facebook. By the time it had reached the 23rd floor, people weren’t sure if it was going to make it to the roof.

As MPR’s Tim Nelson reports, animal control officers put a live trap on the roof with aromatic food so that once it made its way up there it could be captured and safely brought down to the ground. As you can see from the livestream video by local TV news station KARE 11, MPR Raccoon reached the top of the building at around 2:50am local time in Minnesota. But we’re still waiting for any word on what condition the raccoon might be in.

The raccoon gave people something to root for, but it sure was a perilous journey. If something bad happened to that raccoon now I think we’d all just have to crawl back into bed for the day.

We’ll update this post when we know more from St. Paul Animal Control.
[MPR and KARE 11]

What a relief!

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