Friendly raccoon slips past dogs to snuggle with a 10-year-old Texas girl, mom says

A 10-year-old Texas girl woke up to find a raccoon snuggled beside her in bed, her mother says.

Instead of screaming or crying, she actually ended up petting the wild animal.

Mattie Gelman was asleep when the raccoon apparently slipped through a doggy door into her family’s home in Richardson, a suburb north of Dallas, her mom, Sibyl Gelman, told McClatchy News.

“I just woke up and like turned to my side and saw a raccoon sitting there,” Mattie told KTVT.

The family owns four dogs, but none of them seemed to notice when the friendly intruder entered their home, Gelman told KXAS.

“A leaf could blow by, and they’re gonna bark,” she told KXAS. ”They hear people talking two houses down and bark. But a raccoon comes through the house and they don’t smell it or notice it, so they can be dog shamed for that.”

When a dog did finally enter Mattie’s room, the girl soothingly petted the raccoon to keep it calm, her mom told McClatchy. It never hissed, she said.

A video shows the raccoon walking among stuffed animals on a bunk bed as the family talks to it.

The family put the raccoon in a box and freed it outside, Gelman said.

“The raccoon knew who to go to — she is an animal lover,” Gelman said of her daughter.