A raccoon became stuck on top of the border fencing in Otay Mesa -- roughly two dozen feet off the ground -- and was in desperate need of saving.
José González Esparza was driving to Mexico for work through the Otay Mesa Port of Entry Tuesday morning when he spotted the animal in distress.
“I was able to see it because it’s a long and straight road to get to Mexico,” he wrote to NBC 7 in an email. “At first, I thought it was a crow or something like that, but as I got close, I noticed that it was walking on top of the (barrier).”
The border fencing in Otay Mesa is between 18 to 30 feet high, U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed.
“Since there wasn’t so much traffic, I stopped the truck to take the video,” González Esparza said. He is a truck driver and was crossing in one of the export lines to Mexico.
In the video, a raccoon turns slowly in a circle on top of the fencing.
The raccoon appeared unable to get back down at around 9:50 a.m. when González Esparza had to leave the area and continue driving.
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But before he left the port of entry, he said he reported the trapped animal to Customs and Border Protection, and an official said, “They will try to help.” NBC 7 reached out to the department which said it “did not receive a report of a raccoon on the border (fencing).”
González Esparza has been a truck driver for more than two decades but has never seen anything like this before on his travels.
It's not clear how the raccoon managed to scale the fence in the first place or what happened after González Esparza left the port of entry.
