A couple who kept hearing a strange scratching sound coming from behind their walls were stunned when they discovered what it really was. Maddie Neale and her fiancé Nemo weren’t initially too bothered by the scratching, as it wasn’t very often, but this soon changed into a daily source of frustration.
Before long, the noise was spreading through every room of the property. The couple don’t currently live together, and the scratching problem was in the home Nemo shared with roommates.
Maddie told Newsweek: “We had a theory that it was a bird or squirrel at first because of the scratching and the way we would hear it walk, but we were obviously wrong.”
The couple decided to get answers. Utilising a hole in the wall created by an old repair, they were able to slide a phone inside and use the camera light to try and figure out what was causing the noise.
Footage taken from their enquiry shows the interior structure of the wall and the insulation. In the clip, Maddie moves the camera around to the right hand side of the wall’s backing to try and get a thorough look, before panning left.
To the left, on the ground, the small snout and eyes of a little raccoon can be seen, causing Maddie to gasp in shock.
Maddie posted the clip to TikTok, with text added over the top which reads: “hearing something scratching the walls for months so we check”. In the caption accompanying the video, she simply added: “Case closed bruh”.
In just a few days, the TikTok video had garnered more than 24 million views, 2.4 million likes and nearly 5,000 comments from fellow social media users, keen to share their thoughts.
One person joked: “That raccoon was like ‘thank god, I thought there was an animal in here’”.
Another said: “But the insulation moved? Are there multiple raccoons?”
A third agreed: “this is what I went to the comments for because I’m pretty sure the first thing she was looking at was one??? it moooved!!”
A fourth said: “Maybe it’s a mom raccoon, oftentimes they’ll sneak themselves into attic spaces to give birth”.
Someone else disagreed and commented: “I don’t think the insulation moved, if you look closer I’m pretty sure it’s the angle of her camera that makes it look like it moved when she stepped back.”
And another TikTok user added: “he’s like nice to finally meet you I’ve heard you too”.
Maddie told Newsweek: “We were obviously both shocked and had to show his other two roommates. It was funny for a little bit, but obviously more funny to me because I don’t live there.”
Though the issue hasn’t been fixed - and the raccoon crawled into Nemo’s cupboard and ate some of his snacks, including pistachios, and his cough drops while he was away - the tenants have decided to let it go.
Nemo has used duct tape to block any holes in his cupboards but other than that, they’re choosing to live with the noise. Nemo will be graduating from university in May and will be moving out of the property then.
