Candy-eating raccoons leave mess

COLLEGE SPRINGS, Iowa — Several masked intruders vandalized the College Springs Post Office early Friday.

Terry Kendrick, who delivers mail, discovered damage when he arrived at the facility about 7:10 a.m. He called Postmistress Renee Porter to the scene, and she notified her regional manager and the Page County Sheriff's Office.

But once Porter entered the building, she quickly realized what had happened: Raccoons had made their way into the post office overnight.

"I thought someone had come in through the ceiling until I saw paw prints on the counter," Porter said. "I was pretty relieved that there was not someone in here. I was laughing and thought it was kind of funny."

Porter discovered a hole in the roof above a dropped ceiling where the raccoons apparently entered the building. "Evidently there was more than one, because a lot of the tiles in the dropped ceiling had been knocked out or moved around and broken," she said.

An inspection team with the U.S. Postal Service was dispatched from Omaha to survey and document the damage. Soon after the team left, Porter started cleaning up the mess.

Besides the damage to the roof and ceiling, insulation was strewn about the post office, and several boxes and potted plants had been overturned.

The clincher?

"They even got into the suckers we have on the counter and ate the candy," she said.

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