The MPR Raccoon is safe!
We repeat: The MPR Raccoon is safe!
As anyone with an Internet connection knows, it was a tense night on Tuesday for those who tracked the unexpected actions of this creature, who sky-rocketed to viral fame thanks to a climb we"re guessing he really wanted to make.
The animal was discovered by employees at Minnesota Public Radio (hence the hashtag "#MPRraccoon"), whose building sits next to the 23-story office tower in St. Paul that this raccoon decided to scale after he got scared by a window cleaner.
Climbing higher and higher, the critter apparently realized after awhile that he couldn"t simply jump down without risking life and limb…
… so he simply kept going.
My picture from the 13th floor around noon. Hope he makes it down OK! #mprraccoon, read the caption to this amazing photo.
When maintenance workers attempted to coax the raccoon down, he became frightened and scampered so far up the skyscraper that he was out of reach of any human helper.
At various points, the raccoon stopped for a break, sitting on ledges directly outside the windows of various workers and Twitter users.
To wit:
"He is on the ledge on our floor," explains the above individual, who snapped a rather adorable photo of the animal and added:
"He seems to be doing well. We’ve been told that the building has live traps on the roof and are trying to get him to go up there. We all just have to keep our fingers crossed.. #mprraccoon."
Indeed, an entire World Wide Web crossed its collective fingers, unsure how this saga would end, not especially anxious to see a raccoon plummet to his death off the side of a tall building.
(It"s here where we must acknowledge the power of a cute face. Because, let"s face it, raccoons aren"t exactly the most cuddly creatures around.)
Local television station KARE11 in Minnesota started streaming the raccoon’s movements on Tuesday evening, while MPR was constantly updating its story throughout the day on Twitter and Facebook.
The story even reached national levels of attention with a segment on Good Morning America, which we"ve included below.
So… did MPR Raccoon reach the roof and the live trap set there with cat food safely?
YES!
The animal will soon be released into the wild and we"ll be forced to scour New York City for the next milkshake squirrel in order to track down the next four-legged Internet sensation.
Check out footage of this wayward raccoon below!
