Finally, Philly's population is growing - from raccoons!

Raccoons, those furry, nocturnal creatures with bandit faces, are multiplying in the Philadelphia region at an alarming pace, animal-control experts say.

"I'd never seen a raccoon before," said Tara Schernecke, a city animal-control worker for the Pennsylvania SPCA. "Now I see them all the time."

Last month alone, the state Health Department said, two rabid-raccoon cases were reported in each of Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties.

In the city, raccoons' favorite neighborhoods include Germantown, West Philadelphia and parts of the far Northeast, Schernecke said, adding that the heaviest concentrations seem to be near woods and "any areas that have a lot of vacant houses."

One such area is North Bouvier Street above Cumberland, in North Philadelphia, where raccoons have been observed scurrying along rooftops, tearing open trash bags - even roaming across the street in daylight three at a time, said one resident.

Still, experts say, people have little to fear as long as they avoid the animals.

In recent years in the United States, most humans have contracted rabies from bats rather than from raccoons or infected dogs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The last rabies death in Pennsylvania was in 1984, and that victim was infected by a bat, according to the state Health Department. Before that, the last one was in 1952.

City Health Department spokesman Jeff Moran said that only one contact with a rabid raccoon had been reported this year in Philadelphia, and that was with a dog. No rabid raccoons were reported last year, but one had contact with a human in 2007, he said.

"Raccoons have become quite common in Philadelphia and other big cities," the Philadelphia Health Department wrote in a letter to Bouvier Street residents this month.

"Most raccoons will not cause a danger to you if you leave them alone," the department wrote. "A raccoon that is ill or acts strangely is probably not rabid. However, a small number of raccoons may have rabies."

Signs of raccoon illness include disoriented or slow-moving animals or those "walking kind of dizzily or in circles, with drool coming from their mouth," Schernecke said.

If animals are acting strangely, the department advised, call the PSPCA's animal-care and -control team at 267-385-3800.

People can be at risk of illness if they handle or ingest raccoon droppings, which a Bouvier Street resident said can be seen in front of abandoned buildings in the neighborhood.

The feces may contain a type of roundworm that infects raccoons, authorities say. If ingested, the roundworms' eggs can invade the body, and damage to nerve tissue and the brain can result.

New York City Health Department officials recently reported that a teenager had lost sight in one eye after contact with raccoon feces, and an infant suffered brain damage from the raccoon roundworm.

On Bouvier Street, the mere thought that a child might approach a raccoon and be bitten has residents worried.

"We have to be careful in the summertime, because kids are out and playing and they might think it's a friendly raccoon," said Lester Nesbitt, who lives on Bouvier Street near Cumberland.

Coming face-to-face with the creatures is becoming more common, said John Hadidian, director of urban-wildlife programs for the Humane Society of the United States.

"The big picture is, lots of wild animals are moving in, both because we're taking away their land for development and also because they're smart and they figure it out," Hadidian said.

Hadidian said that raccoons are born in spring, so that's when they and their mothers may be out looking for food, even in daytime.

"If you see three of them together, it probably is a family," he said. "Mom is teaching them where to go, how to hide."

The PSPCA's Schernecke said that it gets up to three complaints about raccoons a month.

"You're going to see more and more of them coming out during the daytime," she said. "The people are not covering their trash. They're [raccoons] getting into the trash cans and garbage pails."

The Bouvier Street raccoons apparently live in several abandoned houses, said Nesbitt and neighbor Ron Brown.

Nesbitt said that he tried getting rid of them by putting out "Critter Ridder," a product that contains irritants in liquid or granular form.

He said that he also filled several large holes in a vacant house with concrete in an attempt to keep the raccoons from nesting there.

Bridget Greenwald, deputy director of the Department of Licenses and Inspections, said that L&I received a raccoon complaint April 13 and sent an inspector to Bouvier Street the next day. The inspector posted a sign ordering a house owner to repair the property.

Greenwald said that if an owner fails to comply after 30 days, the city can send workers to clean and seal the property.

Schernecke said that animal-control officers wouldn't remove the raccoons from the Bouvier Street house until L&I had sealed it up. And Thomas McDade III, L&I's director of enforcement, said that he would not send a clean-and-seal team into the house until the raccoons had been removed.