TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Thursday morning Aubrey Iacobelli was woken up by her dog growling at 4:15 a.m.
"I have a doggy door and my dog sleeps right in front of that dog door. I hear her going in and out all night. I wake up and I hear her barking outside," said Iacobelli.
She asked her Amazon Echo device ("Alexa") to turn on the lights and saw her dog was staring at the Christmas tree and barking.
"I just knew that there was something there, that shouldn't have been there. I see a furry body in the Christmas tree," she said.
She grabbed a frying pan to try to get the animal she thought was a cat out of her tree.
Iacobelli said, "I didn't want to hurt the animal. I just wanted it outside of the house."
The creature finally came out of the tree and revealed itself. Iacobelli and her dog spotted the raccoon on the side of the tree and the dog jumped towards it, knocking over the tree.
"The raccoon ran away from freedom. Jumped on my chandelier where it swung there for like 30 minutes," she said.
After chasing the raccoon around her house for an hour it finally went back outside by using the dog door it used to enter the house in the first place.
Iacobelli says her advice to others in a similar situation is to call Animal Control, don't try to do this on your own and just laugh at yourself - that's all you can do.