'Plague' of beer-drinking drunken raccoons raiding houses and eating pets in Germany

According to Germany’s National Hunting Association (DJV), a total of 200,000 raccoons were killed last year in a bid to control the population.

Twenty years ago, the number of racoons were less than 10,000 which scientists suggest is down to the creatures being an “unbelievably adaptable animal”.

Experts added that attempts to control the numbers through hunting have had the adverse effect of increasing its already prodigious birth rate.

“These animals, which are so cute at first sight, have become a plague in some parts of the country,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a daily German newspaper, said.

“But the problem can no longer be eradicated, so we have to learn to live with them. In less than a century this species has made Germany its home. That’s a story of both success and suffering.”

The animals have reportedly been eating pet rabbits and fish.

Berlin alone is home to an estimated 1,000 raccoons and have been found living in state high schools, boarding buses and in allotment gardens.

A video posted on social media shows a racoon running away from an animal rescue worker in the office buildings used by MPs in central Berlin.

The visit was “a welcome surprise... unfortunately the little raccoon could not find his way back alone, so we gave him a little help,” the Bundestag stated.

The country's senate rejected calls to sanction killing the raccoons, and instead said it would rather encourage the public to lock their bins properly.

However, hunters have complained that the species is “a real catastrophe for native wildlife”.

Nature organisation NABU claims that raccoons hunt the young lapwings and endangered red kites.

They were first brought to Germany in the 1920s, but the first pair were released into the wild at the beginning of the Nazi era.